Donald Trump to travel to Israel as country anxiously awaits hostage releases

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Donald Trump is set to leave Washington for Israel on Sunday as the country anxiously awaits the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas as part of a peace deal brokered by the US president to end the two-year-old conflict in Gaza.

Trump is scheduled to arrive in Israel on Monday to meet with the families of the hostages and deliver a speech before the Knesset as part of a lightning trip to the Middle East during which he will also attend the “peace summit” in Egypt with 20 world leaders.

The US President’s visit comes at a time when Hamas is scheduled to hand over the twenty hostages it is holding in Gaza by noon on Monday local time in exchange for the release of about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons.

On Sunday afternoon, US Vice President J.D. Vance raised speculation that a hostage release — which would also include the bodies of at least some of the 28 who died — could be brought forward, telling NBC News that it “should happen any minute now.”

But Gal Hirsch, the Israeli brigadier general who heads the Directorate of Hostages and Missing Persons in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, later said the government still expected to return the hostages as of Monday dawn.

“From about 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., it will become realistic,” Hirsch said, adding that this is the timing that the Red Cross and Israeli forces were preparing for, while warning that it could still happen sooner.

Hirsch also said that after the living hostages are returned, the Red Cross will return to Gaza to retrieve the bodies of the dead. “A number of deceased hostages are expected to return to our hands tomorrow. We are not saying a number,” he said.

Netanyahu said in a televised speech on Sunday evening that the release of the hostages would be a “historic event” that some did not believe would happen.

He added: “But our fighters believed. Many in the nation believed. And I believed.”

An Israeli government spokesman said that the Palestinian prisoners will be released after the hostages leave Gaza.

The prospect of an end to the war in Gaza has sparked a wave of emotions in both Israel and Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis chanted, “Thank you, Trump!” When they gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening.

Celebrations were also held in Gaza, where displaced families began returning to their often destroyed homes.

However, while both Israel and Hamas have agreed to the exchange, and the fragile ceasefire in Gaza has held since Friday, they have yet to agree on the second phase of Trump’s peace plan.

This calls for the disarmament of Hamas, a broader withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, and the deployment of an international force to maintain stability in the Palestinian territories.

An Egyptian presidential spokesman said on Saturday that the Sharm El-Sheikh summit aims to “end the war in the Gaza Strip, strengthen peace and stability efforts in the Middle East, and open a new page in regional security and stability.”

Among the leaders who confirmed their attendance at the summit, which will be co-chaired by Trump and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

However, neither Israel nor Hamas will participate, and diplomats expect that securing their approval for the second phase will be much more complicated than the first.

The Netanyahu government has not pledged to completely withdraw its forces from Gaza, nor is it talking about ending the war. His far-right coalition partners have repeatedly threatened to bring down his administration if the conflict ends without destroying Hamas.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that he had ordered Israeli forces to prepare to blow up Hamas’ remaining tunnel network in Gaza.

Hamas has not yet agreed to disarm and, in a show of force, has begun to reassert its power in parts of Gaza that Israel has withdrawn from since the ceasefire took effect on Friday. The group set up checkpoints and engaged in gun battles with rival factions in the enclave.

However, diplomats view Trump’s peace plan as the best chance yet to finally end the war, which was sparked by an October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel during which Palestinian militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took another 250 hostage.

The Israeli retaliatory attack killed more than 67,600 people, according to Palestinian officials, reduced much of Gaza to uninhabitable ruins, and sparked accusations – which Israel denies – of genocide.