Trump says he expects Hamas decision in 24 hours on 'final' peace proposal
Kanishka Singh
and
Nandita Bose
, Reuters
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House.
Photo:
SAUL LOEB / AFP
US President Donald Trump has said it would probably be known in 24 hours whether the Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to accept what he has called a "final proposal" for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza.
The president also said he had spoken to Saudi Arabia about expanding the Abraham Accords, the deal on normalisation of ties that his administration negotiated between Israel and some Gulf countries during his first term.
Trump said on Tuesday Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.
He was asked on Friday if Hamas had agreed to the latest ceasefire deal framework, and said: "We'll see what happens, we are going to know over the next 24 hours."
A source close to Hamas said on Thursday the Islamist group sought guarantees that the new US-backed ceasefire proposal would lead to the end of Israel's war in Gaza.
Two Israeli officials said those details were still being worked out. Dozens of Palestinians were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, according to Gaza authorities.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered in October 2023 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies show.
Gaza's health ministry said Israel's subsequent military assault has killed over 56,000 Palestinians. It has also caused a hunger crisis, internally displaced Gaza's entire population and prompted accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice and of war crimes at the International Criminal Court. Israel denies the accusations.
A previous two-month ceasefire ended when Israeli strikes killed more than 400 Palestinians on 18 March. Trump earlier this year proposed a US takeover of Gaza, which was condemned globally by rights experts, the UN and Palestinians as a proposal of "ethnic cleansing."
Trump made the comments on the Abraham Accords when asked about US media reporting late on Thursday that he had met Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman at the White House.
"It's one of the things we talked about," Trump said. "I think a lot of people are going to be joining the Abraham accords," he added, citing the predicted expansion to the damage faced by Iran from recent US and Israeli strikes.
Axios reported that after the meeting with Trump, the Saudi official spoke on the phone with Abdolrahim Mousavi, chief of Iran's General Staff of the Armed Forces.
Trump's meeting with the Saudi official came ahead of a visit to Washington next week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
-Reuters
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RNZ News
7 hours ago
- RNZ News
Nearly 300 visa applications from Israelis, Palestinians and Iranians in lpast month
Photo: RNZ Immigration New Zealand has received nearly 300 offshore visa applications from Israeli, Palestinian and Iranian nationals since 1 June 2025. It follows the most recent armed conflict between Israel and Iran, which started on 13 June when Israel launched an air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders. In a statement to RNZ, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) said the government agency "understands the difficult situation this crisis is causing for many and has great sympathy for those separated from their loved ones during this stressful time". INZ acting director visa Marcelle Foley said 277 offshore visa applications from Israelis , Palestinians and Iranians had been made across all visa categories since the start of last month. The vast majority were Iranian nationals. "230 visa applications were submitted from Iranian nationals," Foley said. "Of those, 93 have been approved and seven declined. The remaining applications are either still under assessment or have been withdrawn. "Forty-one applications were submitted by Israeli nationals. Twenty-four have been approved, one was declined, and the remainder are still being processed. "Six applications were submitted from Palestinian nationals, with two approved and the rest currently under assessment." INZ also revealed that since 7 October 2023, a total of 8634 New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA) applications have been granted to Israeli nationals. "Israel is a visa waiver country. This means Israeli citizens visiting New Zealand temporarily do not need to apply for a visitor visa but must obtain a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA)," said Marcelle Foley, Acting Director Visa. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
NZ Herald
12 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Brics leaders criticise US tariffs; Xi and Putin absent from summit
Brics leaders meeting in Rio de Janeiro from Sunday are expected to decry US President Donald Trump's 'indiscriminate' trade tariffs, saying they are illegal and risk hurting the global economy. Emerging nations, which represent about half the world's population and 40% of global economic output, are set to unite over
Scoop
12 hours ago
- Scoop
The Fanatic's Gaze: Louis Theroux And The West Bank Settlers
He has made it his bread and butter for years: finding society's kooky representatives, the marginal, the crazed and the touched. But what makes Louis Theroux's The Settlers troubling is its examination of a seemingly inexorable process in the West Bank, one that has, at its core, a religious, nationalist goal of cleansing and violent purification. The documentary captures Israel's modern colonial project in real time, and it is one most ugly. The target of the cleansing and eradication – the Palestinians in the West Bank – is awesomely horrific, rationalised by suffocating checkpoints, brooding military posts and endless harassing points of invigilation. Having already made The Ultra Zionists, a documentary on the same subject in 2011, Theroux finds, notably after the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023, a missionary project of hardened purpose. The edge on the 'ultra' has been taken off. The fringe has moved to the centre. Sanitised areas (the language of ethnic scrubbing) pullulate with armed settlers holding forth with pious defiance in outposts of a land seen as promised to them. One figure interviewed, the gun-toting Texas-born settler Ari Abramowitz, sees the Bible as supplying Jews 'a land deed to the West Bank.' Palestinian shopfronts remain closed for security reasons, and Palestinians barred from visiting designated areas without appropriate approval. Theroux's guide and local peace activist Issa Amro is unable to accompany him to areas in Hebron where settlers are offered continuous military protection. When Theroux and his guides visit a ruined Palestinian home in Tuwuni in the night, an IDF patrol with laser sights is not far behind. At one checkpoint, Theroux is accosted by a balaclava-wearing Israeli soldier, provoking him to bark 'Don't touch me'. They are solid reminders to Palestinians living in the West Bank that they are living on borrowed time, a measure that diminishes with each day. Daniella Weiss emerges as a central character, a figure who has led the Israeli settler movement for half a century. She reveals being clandestinely escorted by the sympathetic soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces into Gaza to scout for possible future settlements. (800 families, goes the proud claim, await moving into them.) She grins, mocks and scorns, but does, at some point, demonstrate to Theroux her view about settler violence. For her, it does not exist. In that familiar pattern, even if it did exist, it would be justifiable because of Palestinian violence. When Theroux says he had seen a video of a Palestinian being shot, Weiss retorts that the Israel shooter was merely retaliating. She proceeds to shove him, hoping he returns the serve. He considers the display sociopathic. Yet sociopathy and the limitless well of self-defence are firm friends for Weiss and any number of IDF personnel and lawyers who see their cause as worthy. All are incapable of violence, incapable of genocide. Critics have taken issue with the lens of the documentary, suggesting that the camera can deceive because of its sharp focus. The sampling of settlers shows them as almost comically villainous, their fanaticism icy and cruelty assured. The British-Palestinian writer and activist John Aziz was frustrated by the 'selection of nasty extremists who lurched between denying the existence of Palestinians and expressing the desire to conquer more land and drive out the Arab inhabitants.' He even takes issue with the keen interest in Weiss, curious given that any program about Israeli settlements would look bare without her starring role. Aziz misses the point in his demand for an elusive nuance. People once seen as marginalised pioneers seeking land in the West Bank have become the spear of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After October 7, 2023, it has become modish to entertain notions of expulsion, dispossession and seizure, to finally bury Palestinian notions of self-determination. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and follower of the teachings of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn rabbi who, after moving to Israel, declared 'the idea of a democratic Jewish state [a] nonsense', is symptomatic of this shift. Convicted on eight charges, among them supporting a terrorist organisation and incitement to racism, Ben-Gvir regularly advocates ethnic cleansing of both the West Bank and Gaza. In May this year, the Israeli Security Cabinet initiated the land registration process in Area C in the West Bank, a process which determines final ownership of land and extinguishes other claims. The Ministry of Defense was unequivocal about the goal of this move in a statement: 'to strengthen, consolidate, and expand Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.' While the Israeli settlers seem to fail to see the Palestinians as human beings with valid territorial claims, international law has little time for the legality of the settlements. They are structures of a colonising project, and one regarded as unlawful. In its advisory opinion from July 2024, the International Court of Justice found that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory was 'a wrongful act of a continuing character which has been brought about by Israel's violations, through its policies and practices, of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.' The settler project can also count on abundant support from the private sector. In her report to the UN Human Rights Council From economy of occupation to economy of genocide Francesca Albanese, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, lashes 'corporate entities' international and local who have been enriched by 'the Israeli economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now genocide.' This includes heavy investments in the West Bank colonising enterprise, be it through supplying logistics, construction equipment and building materials. With the Israeli settlers being the shock troops of the Israeli State, Weiss's boast captured by Theroux is being realised: 'We do for governments what they can't do for themselves.'
