Tag: Hamas

•U.S., Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, others sign Gaza declaration

Hamas has freed the last living Israeli hostages under a ceasefire deal, a big step towards ending two years of ruinous war in Gaza as U.S. President Donald Trump addressed Israel’s parliament, urging it to turn military success into peace.

The Israeli military said it had received all hostages confirmed to be alive after their transfer from Gaza by the Red Cross, prompting cheering, hugging and weeping among thousands waiting at “Hostage Square” in Tel Aviv.

Some of the nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees freed by Israel as part of the accord, ahead of a summit in Egypt to cement the ceasefire, began arriving in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, some hoisted on the shoulders of delighted relatives.

“The skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace,” Trump told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, saying a “long nightmare” for both Israelis and Palestinians was over.

“Now, it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East,” he said before his planned trip to Egypt for the summit.

Also yesterday, world leaders gathered in Egypt for a summit aimed at supporting the ceasefire reached in Gaza.

Before the summit co-chaired by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi and Trump began, el-Sissi hailed Trump as the “only one” able to bring peace to the region.

The 20 world leaders, who attended the summit, include King Abdullah of Jordan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the French president and the British prime minister.

However, formidable obstacles remain even to a resolution of the Gaza conflagration, let alone to the wider, generations-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict or other longstanding schisms running through the Middle East.

The release of hostages and Palestinian detainees was pivotal to the first phase of the Gaza accord concluded last week in the Egyptian seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where Monday’s summit will take place.

Over 20 world leaders will weigh how to carry out the next steps under Trump’s 20-point blueprint for an end to the war.

The deal came two years after the October 7, 2023 cross-border Hamas assault that killed 1,200 people with 251 taken hostage, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Israeli airstrikes, bombardments and ground offensives have since killed over 67,000 Palestinians, the enclave’s health officials say, and laid waste to much of the enclave.

A global hunger monitor said Gaza City and surrounding areas are suffering from a famine afflicting over half a million Palestinians, and most of Gaza’s 2.2 million people are homeless.

Aid supplies are meant to flow more smoothly into the enclave under Trump’s plan. U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher underlined the need to “get shelter and fuel to people who desperately need it and to massively scale up the food and medicine and other supplies going in.”

The war has also reshaped the Middle East through spillover Israeli conflicts with Iran, Lebanon’s Tehran-backed Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.

Bodies of some of the 26 confirmed dead hostages, and another two whose fate was unknown, will also be released on Monday. A committee has been established to locate some bodies likely lost in the wreckage of Gaza.

But major questions remain over what happens next, raising the risk of a slide back into war. The gathering reflects the international will to follow through on the deal.

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Israel has rejected any role in Gaza for the internationally backed Palestinian Authority, whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, arrived in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh before the gathering.

El-Sissi’s office said the leaders’ summit aimed to “end the war” in Gaza and “usher in a new page of peace and regional stability” in line with Trump’s vision.

Egyptian Air Force jets escorted Trump’s Air Force One for a spin above the resort before he landed and was received by el-Sissi at the airport.

In Israel, Trump urged the country’s lawmakers to work toward peace. To the Palestinians, he said it was time to concentrate on building.

Under the first phase, Israeli troops pulled back from some parts of Gaza, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza to return home from areas they were forced to evacuate. Aid groups are preparing to bring in large quantities of aid kept out of the territory for months.

The next phase of the deal will have to tackle disarming Hamas, creating a post-war government for Gaza and handling the extent of Israel’s withdrawal from the territory. Trump’s plan also stipulates that regional and international partners will work to develop the core of a new Palestinian security force.

Abdelatty said the international force needs a U.N. Security Council resolution to endorse its deployment.

Turkey, which hosted Hamas political leaders for years, played a key role in bringing about the ceasefire agreement.

Jordan, alongside Egypt, will train the new Palestinian security force.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged 20 million British pounds ($27 million) to help provide water and sanitation for Gaza and that Britain will host a three-day conference on Gaza’s reconstruction and recovery.

Speaking in Egypt, Starmer said Britain was ready to “play its full part” in ensuring that the current ceasefire results in a lasting peace.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres, European Union President António Costa and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also attended the summit.

Hamas is seeking amendments to the latest U.S. ceasefire proposal for Gaza, a senior official with the group said at the weekend.

But U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff called the Hamas response “totally unacceptable”.

The latest friction in negotiations comes as the fighting nears 20 months of war, and as desperation grows among hungry Palestinians and relatives of hostages in Gaza.

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The Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks, said proposed amendments focused on “the U.S. guarantees, the timing of hostage release, the delivery of aid and the withdrawal of Israeli forces.” There were no details.

A separate Hamas statement said the proposal aims for a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an ensured flow of aid. It said 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 others would be released “in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners”. Fifty-eight hostages remain and Israel believes 35 are dead.

A top Hamas official has called on “anyone who can bear arms” to rise up against U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, a day after Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu said he would let the militant group’s leaders leave the war-ravaged enclave if they lay down their weapons.

“In the face of this sinister plan – one that combines massacres with starvation – anyone who can bear arms, anywhere in the world, must take action,” Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.

“Do not withhold an explosive, a bullet, a knife, or a stone. Let everyone break their silence.”

Abu Zuhri’s call comes a day after Netanyahu offered to let Hamas leaders leave Gaza but demanded that the Palestinian militant group disarm in the final stages of the war in Gaza.

Hamas has expressed a willingness to relinquish Gaza’s administration, but has warned its weapons are a “red line”.

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Netanyahu said Israel was working towards a plan proposed by Trump to displace Gazans to other countries.

Netanyahu said that after the war, Israel would ensure overall security in Gaza and “enable the implementation of the Trump plan” – which had initially called for the mass displacement of all 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory – calling it a “voluntary migration plan”.

Days after taking office in January, Trump floated a proposal to move Gaza’s population out of the war-battered territory, suggesting that Egypt or Jordan could take them in.

Egypt has put forward a new proposal aimed at restoring the Gaza ceasefire deal as Palestinian health authorities said Israeli strikes have killed at least 65 people in the enclave in the past 24 hours.

Security sources told Reuters that the proposal, made last week, follows an escalation in violence after Israel resumed air and ground operations against Hamas, effectively ending two months of relative calm.

Health officials said Israel has killed nearly 700 Palestinians since it resumed its attacks, including at least 400 women and children. Islamist group Hamas said several of its senior political and security officials had also been killed.

The Egyptian plan calls for Hamas to release five Israeli hostages each week, with Israel implementing the second phase of the ceasefire after the first week, two security sources said.

Hamas is still holding 59 hostages, with 24 of them thought to be still alive.

The security sources said both the U.S. and Hamas agreed to the proposal, but Israel has not yet responded.A Hamas official didn’t confirm the proposed offer, but told Reuters that “several proposals are being discussed with the mediators to bridge the gap and to resume negotiations to reach common ground that would pave the way to start the second phase of the agreement.’’