Trump pushes for Israel, Hamas deal as talks kick off
TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. President Donald Trump is pressing Israel and Hamas to secure a settlement to the two-year conflict that’s devastated Gaza and destabilized the Middle East, with the warring sides starting mediated negotiations.
A key sign of progress in the talks, taking place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, will be whether Hamas frees all the roughly 20 of its live hostages — plus the remains of those who are dead — in return for Israel releasing about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Indirect discussions between negotiators about preparing the conditions for that exchange got underway on Monday, AlQahera News reported on its X account, citing unidentified individuals. Egyptian and Qatari mediators are working with both sides to establish an appropriate mechanism.
There are plenty of contentious issues for the sides to negotiate, including the speed and extent of Israel’s military withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas’s future role in the territory. Still, Trump said on Sunday that initial talks over the hostages had already begun and he thinks they will be freed “very soon.”
“It’ll last a couple of days,” Trump told reporters. “We don’t need flexibility because everybody has pretty much agreed to it,” he said, referring to the 20-point plan announced last week to end the war. “But there’ll always be some changes.”
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were due to be in Egypt. An Israeli delegation led by Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer — one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest advisers — was set to take part in the indirect talks.
Hamas’s team is headed by Khalil Al-Hayya, who Israel tried to assassinate less than a month ago with a missile strike on Qatar. The attack, which killed other Hamas members and a Qatari security guard, angered Arab states and frustrated the U.S., with Trump pledging not to allow Israel to carry out similar actions again.
Trump has made clear that he’s losing patience with both Hamas and Israel. The militant group has yet to accept the full proposal, which would include its ultimate disarmament and agreement not to have any part in the governance of Gaza, a territory it’s ruled since around 2007.
The U.S. president called Netanyahu over the weekend to celebrate Hamas’ apparent willingness to release the hostages, Axios reported Sunday, but the Israeli prime minister complained the offer was meaningless. Trump, according to the report, snapped at Netanyahu for being “negative,” and added, “This is a win. Take it.”
Trump denied the report on Monday in the Oval Office, saying Netanyahu had “been very positive on the deal.”
“Israel’s been great,” Trump said, adding that the U.S. had “just about every nation working on this deal and trying to get it done.”
“And I think Hamas has been agreeing to things that are very important,” he added.
Trump said he had also spoken to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“We have a really good chance of making a deal, and it’ll be a lasting deal,” Trump said, praising his negotiators Witkoff and Kushner. “I think we’ve made tremendous progress.”
The Israeli shekel strengthened 0.5% to 3.28 per dollar on Monday, as investors factor in a greater chance of an end to the war in Gaza. The move extends last week’s gains, when the shekel was the best-performing of a basket of about 30 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg last week.
The Israeli military has assumed a more defensive posture in Gaza City since Friday, though Hamas said airstrikes and shelling continued in the enclave’s de facto capital, killing dozens of people.
Over the weekend, Netanyahu said Israel’s military will redeploy within the territory, without specifying where. He left open the option of disarming Hamas by force if it talks break down.
Details on what Trump’s plan would entail remain scarce, and his demand for an immediate ceasefire may still prove tricky for Netanyahu politically, given that some of his far-right cabinet members will be wary about striking a deal with Hamas. That’s especially the case because the group — designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and others — hasn’t yet agreed to disarm.
Iran-backed Hamas triggered the war by attacking Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Israel has lost more than 450 soldiers in Gaza combat since.
More than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory. Israel’s war sparked a famine in parts of the enclave, according to a UN-backed body, and led another UN-backed panel to declare it a genocide.
The Egypt talks mark the most optimistic moment for diplomacy yet in the conflict, which will reach the two-year mark on Tuesday.
For Trump, a truce in the coming days and the freeing of the hostages could boost his campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize, with the next winner to be announced on Oct. 10. Bloomberg has reported that the president’s public and behind-closed-doors push to get the award has intensified in recent days.
With assistance from Sherif Tarek, Dan Williams, John Harney and Catherine Lucey.
©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.