WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told reporters on Friday that “it’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza,” which he said would include the return of hostages still held captive by Hamas.
Trump updated reporters on the potential for a deal to end the Israel-Hamas war while departing for the Ryder Cup from the South Lawn of the White House.
“I think we have maybe a deal on Gaza, very close to a deal on Gaza… and it’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza, and we’ll let you know,” Trump said as he greeted the press.
“I think it’s a deal that will get the hostages back. It’s going to be a deal that will end the war,” he added, touting that this would be the eighth conflict or war to have been settled since his return to office if a deal materializes.
Hamas is still holding 48 hostages. It is believed that, at maximum, 20 are still alive.
Trump’s comments come a day after he told reporters in the Oval Office he “will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank,” as Breitbart News noted. In response to calls to recognize a Palestinian State, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had considered such action:
The West Bank, known to Israelis as Judea and Samaria, includes Palestinian Arab towns and farms, as well as Jewish settlements and historic sites. It was seized by Jordan in 1948, as Arab armies attempted to destroy Israel after it declared independence. Jordan expelled Jews from the territory but never created a Palestinian state there. Israel took the territory in the 1967 war, after Jordan — ignoring Israeli pleas — attacked Israel.
Palestinians have since claimed the West Bank as part of what they want to be their state, along with Gaza. But Jews have also settled there, reclaiming old towns and establishing new communities. There is support in Israel for annexing the territory, for security and ideological reasons. If Israel were to annex the West Bank, but not Gaza, it would still have an overwhelmingly Jewish population. But annexation is a red line for the Arab world; the Abraham Accords came about after Netanyahu backed off an annexation threat in 2020.
In recent weeks, after several western nations said they would recognize a Palestinian state, despite the war and despite fact that Hamas is still holding Israeli hostages, Israel began to consider responses. Netanyahu authorized the construction of communities east of Jerusalem that would deny any future Palestinian state territorial contiguity in the West Bank, and also considered annexing the territory to Israel outright, again.
Since returning to office, Trump has settled conflicts between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, Armenia and Azerbaijan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Israel and Iran, Cambodia and Thailand, and Pakistan and India. Turkish state media outlet Anadolu Ajansı also reported Trump halted what could have been an escalation between Serbia and Kosovo.
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