Donald Trump has urged Israel to stop bombing Gaza as he expects the first round of peace talks expected to be wrapped up this week.
After Gaza’s Health Ministry said the Palestinian death toll in the war reached 67,160, delegations from Israel and terror group Hamas began indirect negotiations at the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt on Monday.
‘I am told that the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,’ Trump said in a social media post.
Both sides are seeking clarifications of crucial details, including over issues that have wrecked all previous attempts to end the war and could defy any quick resolution.
The Hamas delegation is led by the group’s exiled Gaza leader, Khalil Al-Hayya, who survived an Israeli assassination airstrike that killed his son in Doha, the Qatari capital, a month ago.
Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are also expected to join the talks, Egypt’s state-run media outlet Al-Ahram reported.
Trump has told Israel to suspend its bombing of Gaza for the talks.
But Gaza health authorities reported 19 people killed by Israeli strikes in the past 24 hours, around a third of the typical daily toll of recent weeks when Israel has been mounting one of its biggest offensives of the war, an all-out assault on Gaza City.
‘If there is a deal, then we survive. If there isn’t, it is like we have been sentenced to death,’ said Gharam Mohammad, 20, displaced along with her family in central Gaza.
What is preventing ceasefire?
Inside Israel there is clamour for an end to the war to bring home hostages, although right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet oppose any halt to fighting.
Negotiators from Hamas will seek clarity on the mechanism to achieve a swap of remaining hostages – both alive and dead – for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and a ceasefire, according to a statement put out by the Islamist group.
A thorny issue is likely to be the Israeli demand, echoed in Trump’s plan, that Hamas disarm, a Hamas source said. The group has insisted it will not disarm unless Israel ends its occupation and a Palestinian state is created.
The talks commenced on the eve of the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war, when fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.