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United States President Donald Trump said talks on implementing a truce for Gaza will take days, while his foreign policy chief Marco Rubio warned Israel needs to stop bombing for a hostage release to happen.
“They’re in negotiations right now as we speak. They’ve started the negotiations. It’ll last a couple of days,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
“We’ll see how it turns out. But I’m hearing it’s going very well.”
In a text exchange with CNN, Trump said “yes” when asked if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was on board with ending the military campaign in Gaza.
Negotiators from Israel and Hamas were set to hold talks in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, with Netanyahu expressing hope that hostages held in Gaza could be released within days.
The diplomatic push follows the positive response by Hamas to Trump’s 20-point roadmap for an end to the fighting and the release of captives in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails and administrative detention.
But Hamas left some issues up for further negotiation at talks in Egypt, as well as questions unanswered, such as whether it would be willing to disarm, a key demand from Israel to end the war.
Meanwhile, Rubio called for a halt to Israeli bombing on Gaza.
“I think the Israelis and everyone acknowledge you can’t release hostages in the middle of strikes, so the strikes will have to stop,” he told a CBS News talk show.
“There can’t be a war going on in the middle of it.”
Hopes for peace in Gaza but Israeli strikes continue
Trump’s plan has stirred hopes for peace among Palestinians, but there was no let-up in Israeli attacks on Gaza on the weekend as planes and tanks pounded areas across the enclave, killing at least 19 people, local health authorities said.
Four of those killed were seeking aid in the south of the Strip, and five were killed in an airstrike in Gaza City, they said.
Shadi Mansour stood in the destruction left by an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza City suburb of Tuffah, which killed his son Ameer, 6, and 16 other people.
“Is he a member of the resistance? Is he a fighter? All the targets of the Israeli army are children,” Mansour said.
Ahmed Assad, a displaced Palestinian man in central Gaza, said he had been hopeful when news broke of Trump’s plan, but said nothing had changed on the ground.
“We do not see any change to the situation, on the contrary, we don’t know what action to take, what shall we do? Shall we remain in the streets? Shall we leave?” he questioned.
In a sign of Israeli optimism over the Trump plan, the shekel currency hit a three-year high against the dollar and Tel Aviv stocks reached an all-time high.
Some people in Tel Aviv shared that sentiment. “It’s the first time in months that I’m actually hopeful. Trump has really instilled a lot of hope into us,” resident Gil Shelly said.
Domestically, Netanyahu is caught between growing pressure to end the war — from hostage families and a war-weary public — and demands from hardline members of his coalition who insist there must be no let-up in Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Far-right Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on X that halting attacks on Gaza would be a “grave mistake”. He and security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have threatened to bring down Netanyahu’s government if the Gaza war ends.
How could the peace negotiations unfold this time?
An official briefed on the talks said the negotiations will focus on hammering out a comprehensive deal before a ceasefire can be implemented.
“This differs from earlier rounds of negotiations which followed a phased approach, where the first phase was agreed and then required more negotiations to reach subsequent phases in the ceasefire,” the official told Reuters news agency.
“These subsequent rounds of negotiations is where things broke down previously and there is a conscious effort among mediators to avoid that approach this time around.”
Rubio told US broadcaster ABC that a timeline for finalising a deal to release the hostages was uncertain, but that talks “cannot take weeks or even multiple days. We want to see this happen very fast”.
