US President Donald Trump on Monday said he thought there would be a Gaza deal soon. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said tremendous progress on the issue had been made.
The Trump administration is working hard to advance as quickly as possible a proposed plan to end the conflict in Gaza, with technical discussions underway, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump’s remarks came as delegations from Israel and Hamas began indirect negotiations in Egypt that the US hopes will bring a halt to the war in Gaza.
Israel and Hamas have both endorsed the overall principles behind President Donald Trump's plan, under which fighting would cease, hostages would go free and aid would pour into Gaza.
The plan also has the backing of Arab and Western states. Trump has called for negotiations to take place swiftly towards a final deal, in what Washington hails as the closest the sides have yet come to ending the two-year-old conflict.
Trump, who has cast himself as the only world leader capable of achieving peace in Gaza, has invested significant political capital in efforts to end the war that has killed tens of thousands and left US ally Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage. "I am told that the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST," Trump earlier said in a social media post.
But both sides are seeking clarifications of crucial details, including over issues that have derailed all previous attempts to end the war and could defy any quick resolution.
Trump has pushed Israel to suspend its bombing of Gaza for the talks. Gaza residents said Israel had scaled back its offensive substantially, although not halted it altogether.
Gaza health authorities reported 19 people killed by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, around a third of the typical daily toll in recent weeks, when Israel has been mounting one of its biggest offensives of the war, an all-out assault on Gaza City.
Egyptian state TV reported indirect talks had begun at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh with delegations from Egypt, the United States and Qatar also present as intermediaries.
The talks commenced on the eve of the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war, when fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and left the majority of 2.2 million Gazans homeless and hungry in the rubble of the enclave destroyed by relentless bombardment.
Egyptian sources said Hamas was seeking clarification of several details, including guarantees that Israel would uphold promises to withdraw its troops from Gaza once the militants give up their leverage by freeing their hostages.
But a senior Israeli security source said the talks initially would focus only on the release of hostages and give Hamas a few days to complete that phase.
Israel will not compromise on withdrawing troops only to the so-called yellow line in Gaza — a boundary for an initial Israeli pullback under the Trump plan, the source said. It would create a strategic buffer zone, and further withdrawal would depend on Hamas meeting set conditions.
With Israeli forces blasting their way through Gaza City and flattening neighborhoods as they advance, Gaza residents called a ceasefire their last hope that the enclave will emerge habitable.
"If there is a deal, then we survive. If there isn't, it is like we have been sentenced to death," said Gharam Mohammad, 20, displaced along with her family in central Gaza.
Inside Israel, there is clamor for an end to the war to bring home hostages, although right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet oppose any halt to fighting.
Though Trump says he wants a deal quickly, an official briefed on the negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he expected the round of talks starting on Monday would require at least a few days.
An official involved in ceasefire planning and a Palestinian source said Trump's deadline for hostages to be returned within 72 hours could be impossible to meet for the remains of dead hostages, which may need to be located and recovered from sites across the battlefield.
A Palestinian official close to the talks was skeptical about prospects of a breakthrough given deep mutual mistrust, saying Hamas and other Palestinian factions were worried that Israel might ditch negotiations once it recovered the hostages.
The Israeli delegation includes officials from spy agencies Mossad and Shin Bet, Netanyahu's foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk and hostages coordinator Gal Hirsch. Israel's chief negotiator, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, was expected to join later this week, pending developments in the negotiations, according to three Israeli officials.
The Hamas delegation is led by the group's exiled Gaza leader, Khalil Al-Hayya, who survived an Israeli airstrike that killed his son in Doha, the Qatari capital, a month ago.
The US has sent special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who has strong ties to the Middle East, to the talks, the White House said.
The parties "are going over the lists of both the Israeli hostages and also the political prisoners who will be released," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
"The administration is working very hard to move the ball forward as quickly as we can," she told reporters.
Hamas negotiators will seek to clarify the mechanism for a swap of hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as an Israeli military withdrawal and a ceasefire, according to a Hamas statement late on Sunday.
A thorny issue is likely to be the Israeli demand, echoed in Trump's plan, that Hamas disarm, a Hamas source told Reuters. The group has insisted it will not disarm unless Israel ends its occupation and a Palestinian state is created.
