The Big Story 

Two years since Hamas’s deadly terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, President Trump’s push for peace in the Gaza Strip appears within reach. 

© AP

Israeli and Hamas officials started indirect negotiations in earnest on Monday in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 

The president is exercising enormous pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and relying on Arab and Muslim leaders to apply leverage on Hamas to commit to a ceasefire and release hostages. There’s overwhelming international demand for a halt to the war. 

For Netanyahu, Trump’s plan provides the best chance to quickly free 20 living hostages, and recover the bodies of 28 others by retreating from a massive military campaign that has sharply divided Israeli society. 

Hamas’s goals are not entirely clear. Much of its senior leadership is decimated, and Trump has offered amnesty or exile in exchange for agreeing to his 20-point plan for peace. 

Trump said he expected the negotiations to conclude within days, with his senior officials saying the talks are meant to hammer out details of a ceasefire, hostage release, and Palestinian prisoner exchange. 

The president said Netanyahu was “very positive on the deal” while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday afternoon, adding that Hamas has been “fine” during negotiations. 

“I hope it’s going to continue that way. I think it will,” he said. “I really think we’re going to have a deal. We have a really good chance of making a deal. And it will be a lasting deal.”

Establishing a ceasefire would mark the first major pause in fighting since March. The truce at that time broke down over accusations of violations by both Israel and Hamas and failure to move to a second stage of talks over a pathway to end the war. 

“An Israeli is very reluctant to admit to optimism, it’s always better to hedge your bets,” Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, said Monday during a panel discussion hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 

“But I realized today that this is the first time, maybe since Oct. 7 that when I think of the situation, I’m breathing. Literally, breathing. I suppose that’s the answer, that I’m feeling hopeful.”

Trump gave Netanyahu little choice but to enter into negotiations with Hamas, telling Israel to “stop” bombing Gaza following Hamas’s response to the president’s 20-point peace proposal on Friday. Trump earlier pressured the Israeli leader to accept his peace plan for ending the war during a White House meeting on Sept. 29.

“I spoke to President [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan of Turkey, he’s been pushing very, very hard to get this deal done. And Hamas has a lot of respect for him, they have a lot of respect for Qatar, they have a lot of respect for UAE and Saudi Arabia. Everybody is on our side to get this deal done,” Trump said Monday.

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