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US envoy Steve Witkoff and Arab negotiators will hold crunch talks with Israel and Hamas in Cairo on Monday in a bid to iron out details of Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year war in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli hostages.
The US president has warned Hamas to “move quickly” after he said Israel agreed to redeploy troops to an “initial line” behind its front lines in Gaza on Saturday. That step forms part of the deal’s first phase, which is also due to include a ceasefire declaration and hostage release.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who dispatched Ron Dermer, one of his closest lieutenants, to the talks in Cairo — said he hoped to be able to announce the release of the hostages in the “coming days”.
Witkoff will be accompanied at the talks in Cairo by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who served as the president’s Middle East envoy in his first term and has played a growing role in formulating the Gaza plan in recent months.
Qatar and Egypt are the main Arab mediators. Turkey, which like Qatar hosts Hamas political figures, has become more involved.
New momentum has been injected into diplomatic efforts to end the war — which has killed tens of thousands of people, devastated Gaza and triggered a wave of regional conflict — after Trump last week unveiled a 20-point plan for a ceasefire and the postwar rule of Gaza.
Netanyahu has said Israel accepts the plan, but with caveats. Hamas has also broadly agreed with the proposals and said it was willing to free the 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be still alive.
Demonstrators at a rally organised by the families of Israeli hostages protest outside the Israeli prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem © Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images
Trump has put pressure on both parties to move forward with the plan, last week telling Israel to “immediately” halt its offensive in Gaza. He has also warned Hamas of the consequences if it does not, saying that “all bets are off” if the militant group does not act quickly.
But experts say there are likely to be huge challenges in getting the warring parties to agree on the finer details of the multiphase plan, which calls for Hamas to be disarmed and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
Under the plan, the strip of 2.1mn people would be administered by a Palestinian committee of technocrats, overseen by an international supervisory board headed by Trump. An international stabilisation force would be deployed to manage security alongside Palestinian police trained by Arab and western states.
The UN would oversee a surge in aid into the strip, where Israel’s offensive has killed more than 67,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials, and has caused widespread starvation.
Hamas — which triggered the war with its October 7, 2023 attack, during which militants killed 1,200 people and seized 250 hostages — would have no role in the governance of the strip.
But its members would be offered amnesty if they renounced violence and disarmed. In return for the release of the Israeli hostages, Israel would free nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, several hundred of whom are serving life sentences.
Hamas has said it is willing to hand over governance of Gaza, which it has controlled since 2007, to a Palestinian committee.
But it is not clear whether it would accept disarmament. It also wants to negotiate details of the Israeli troop withdrawal from the strip and the international stabilisation force, said a person briefed on the talks.
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The militant group on Saturday accused Israel of continuing its assault on Gaza despite Israeli claims that the offensive had been paused. Hamas said that dozens of Gazans were killed in the territory.
Netanyahu said at the weekend that the Cairo talks would focus on finalising “the technical details for the release of our hostages”.
He said Hamas would be disarmed and Gaza demilitarised during the second stage, but the prime minister did not commit to a full Israeli military withdrawal. “Hamas will be disarmed . . . this will happen diplomatically via the Trump plan or militarily by us,” Netanyahu insisted.
The US proposals state that Israel would not occupy or annex Gaza. Its full withdrawal would be based on timeframes linked to the demilitarisation of the strip.
Arab and Muslim states issued a joint statement on Sunday supporting Trump’s plan, but also calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
They called for the Palestinian Authority, which administers limited parts of the occupied West Bank, to ultimately return to the strip, and for a future two-state solution to the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
