Hostage release deal ‘a matter of days’: White House

Donald Trump and his Middle East envoy say progress is being made on the hostage talks as the president pressures Israel to wrap up its current military campaign in the coming weeks.

Demonstrators call for the release of the Israeli hostages in Jerusalem. Picture: AFP.

Israeli hostages held in Gaza could be freed within days, according to President Trump’s Middle East envoy, resulting in renewed hope for an end to the war.

“A very serious deal is brewing on the table – and it’s a matter of a few days,” Steve Witkoff told families of hostages he met at the White House on Thursday.

Trump also said progress was being made to bring the remaining hostages home, but did not give further details. Other reports said the president is pressuring Israel to wrap up its current military campaign in the coming weeks.

Hope had been dwindling for a new deal to bring home the more than 20 living hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip in time for the festival of Passover, which celebrates Jewish freedom from slavery. One hostage who was freed in the latest exchange asked those celebrating to leave an empty chair at the table not to forget those still in captivity.

“I think about them, and I think about us, because until they return, none of us can truly be free,” Karina Ariev said.

Massive strikes and ground operations have been launched across the strip since Israel restarted the war last month, with the army seizing more than half the territory and pushing Palestinians into ever-shrinking pockets of land in an effort to pressure Hamas to accept their terms for a deal.

It has also stopped all food, fuel and aid from entering Gaza for over a month, while deadly strikes have ripped across the Palestinian territory, raising the Palestinian death toll above 50,000 since the start of the war, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which added that more than half of the victims were women and children.

The renewal of the war has inflamed an already divided society in Israel, with hundreds of Air Force reservists and retirees on Thursday saying the war has no military goal and “mainly serves political and personal interests”, according to a letter published in Israel’s major newspapers.

“The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its stated goals and will lead to the death of abductees, IDF soldiers and innocent civilians, and to the attrition of reservists,” the letter said. It stopped short of calling for a refusal to serve, a move that was employed by reservists in the run-up to the war to stop planned reforms to the country’s judiciary.

The military responded by dismissing hundreds of reservists who signed the letter.

Witkoff, who as well as being the official Middle East envoy has also taken on much of the Trump administration’s key global negotiations, is expected to meet Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in Oman on Saturday, for the official start of face-to-face talks to curb Iran’s nuclear program. Washington has warned of military action should the talks fail and has bolstered its military forces in the region over the last few weeks.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said during a cabinet meeting chaired by Trump on Thursday: “We hope that’ll lead to peace. We’ve been very clear what Iran is never going to have as a nuclear weapon, and I think that’s what led to this meeting.”

Iran has said it is unwilling to engage in direct negotiations over its nuclear program, understood to be its strongest military deterrent after the weakening of many of its regional allies.

On Thursday, a senior adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iran could expel inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog over Washington’s “threats”.

Rear-Admiral Ali Shamkhan wrote on X: “The continuation of external threats and Iran being in a state of military attack may lead to deterrent measures, including expulsion of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency and cessation of co-operation.”

Iran has largely had free reign over its military activity since Trump in 2018 nullified the Obama-era nuclear deal signed with major powers three years earlier.

The Times