President Donald Trump said he was close to forging a deal to end the war in Gaza and bring hostages home as he prepared to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.
“It’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza. I think it’s a deal that gets the hostages back, it’s going to be a deal that ends the war,” Trump said.
He offered no details and gave no timetable.
A senior White House official told Reuters that Trump will meet Netanyahu on Monday at the White House with the aim of reaching a framework for a deal. Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday.
Ahead of the speech, Netanyahu instructed Israel’s military to set up loudspeakers around Gaza to broadcast his remarks.
He also claimed Israeli intelligence had streamed his words directly onto mobile phones across the territory.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told CNN in a statement that it “instructed civilian bodies, in co-ordination with the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), to place loudspeakers on trucks on the Israeli side of the Gaza border only, with the aim of broadcasting Prime Minister Netanyahu’s historic speech” as part of a ‘public diplomacy effort’.
While international leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York this week, the US unveiled a 21-point Middle East peace plan to end the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
The proposal was circulated last Tuesday to officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Türkiye, Indonesia and Pakistan, according to US special envoy Steve Witkoff.
A White House official said the US plan calls for the return of all hostages, living and dead, no further Israeli attacks on Qatar and a new dialogue between Israel and Palestinians for ‘peaceful coexistence’.
Israel angered Qataris by launching an air strike against Hamas targets in their capital Doha on September 9.
Trump, Israel’s staunchest ally on the global stage, said he spoke on Thursday with representatives from several Middle Eastern nations as well as Netanyahu.
The Gaza war began when Hamas stormed into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. About 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, are still being held.
Israel’s military response has killed more than 65,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.
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