CAIRO/JERUSALEM: Hamas freed the last living Israeli hostages from Gaza on Monday under a ceasefire deal and Israel sent home busloads of Palestinian detainees, as U.S. President Donald Trump declared the end of the two-year long war that has upended the broader Middle East.
Hours later, Trump convened Muslim and European leaders in Egypt to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip and the possibility of a wider regional peace, even as Hamas and Israel, both absent from the gathering, are yet to agree on the next steps.
The Israeli military said it had received all 20 hostages confirmed to be alive, after their transfer from Gaza by the Red Cross. The announcement prompted cheering, hugging and weeping among thousands waiting at “Hostage Square” in Tel Aviv.
In Gaza, thousands of relatives, many weeping with joy, gathered at a hospital where buses brought home some of the nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees to be freed by Israel as part of the accord.
“The skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace,” Trump told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, saying a “long nightmare” for both Israelis and Palestinians was over.
The U.S., along with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, mediated what has been described as a first phase agreement between Israel and Hamas for a ceasefire and the release of hostages by Hamas and prisoners and detainees by Israel.
At the Egyptian beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh later on Monday, Trump and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hosted more than 20 world leaders for a summit intended to cement the truce.
At the opening of the summit, Trump signed a document with Egypt, Qatar and Turkey’s leaders welcoming the agreements on Gaza and pledging to “work collectively to implement and sustain this legacy.”
Egypt’s presidency said that discussions included the governance, security and reconstruction of Gaza.
“Now the rebuilding begins,” Trump said at the summit, delivering an expansive speech where he described in grand terms the Gaza agreement he helped broker, saying it could be “the greatest deal of them all.”
Israel and Hamas were not represented at the summit, while the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates did not attend.
Trump at one point greeted Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who spoke to the U.S. leader at length. The Palestinian Authority wants to play a significant role in the future administration of Gaza, despite objections from Israel.
FORMIDABLE OBSTACLES REMAIN
The Israeli hostages freed on Monday were the last still alive in captivity from 251 seized in the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023 that killed 1,200 people and triggered the war.
The ceasefire and partial Israeli withdrawal agreed last week halted one of Israel’s biggest offensives of the war, an all-out assault on Gaza City that was killing scores of people per day.
Since then, huge numbers of Palestinians have been able to return to the ruins of homes in the Gaza Strip, swathes of which were reduced to a wasteland by Israeli bombardment that killed 68,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities.
Formidable obstacles remain, even to securing an enduring ceasefire, much less to bringing a wider, more durable peace. Among the immediate issues still to be resolved: recovering the remains of another 26 Israeli hostages believed to have died and two whose fates are unknown.
Hamas says recovering the bodies could take time as not all burial sites are known. Israel’s military said it had escorted four coffins containing the remains of deceased hostages to Israel and that those remains were being identified.
Aid supplies must be rushed into the enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people face famine. U.N. aid chief Tom Fletcher underlined the need to “get shelter and fuel to people who desperately need it and to massively scale up the food and medicine and other supplies going in”.
Beyond that, crucial issues have yet to be resolved, including how to govern and police Gaza, and the ultimate future of Hamas, which still rejects Israel’s demands to disarm.
Hamas gunmen, seeking to assert their presence, launched a security crackdown in Gaza City after Israel’s pullback, killing 32 members of a rival group, a Palestinian security source said.
Tensions have also been rising in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Jewish settlements have expanded in land Palestinians envision as part of a future state.
Trump, speaking on his flight to the region, said Hamas had been given a temporary green light for fighters to keep order: “They do want to stop the problems, and they’ve been open about it, and we gave them approval for a period of time.”
The Gaza War has also reshaped the Middle East through spillover conflicts, with Israel imposing punishing damage in a 12-day war against Iran and campaigns against Tehran’s regional allies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthis.
Trump, who has presented his plan to end the war in Gaza as the catalyst for a wide regional peace settlement, said more countries would join the Abraham Accords initiative and even floated the idea of a peace deal between arch Middle East enemies Iran and Israel, telling the Knesset he thought Iran wanted one: “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
JOY, RELIEF ON BOTH SIDES
Beaming with relief and joy, two released hostages waved to cheering crowds from vans on the way to an Israeli hospital, one hoisting a large Israeli flag then forming a heart with his hands.
Video footage captured emotional scenes of families receiving phone messages from their loved ones as they were being released, their faces lighting up with disbelief and hope after months of anguish.
“I am so excited. I am full of happiness. It’s hard to imagine how I feel this moment. I didn’t sleep all night,” said Viki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, as she travelled to Reim, an Israeli military camp where hostages were being transferred.
Palestinians meanwhile rushed to embrace prisoners freed by Israel. Several thousand gathered inside and around Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, some waving Palestinian flags, others holding photos of their relatives.
“I am happy for our sons who are being freed, but we are still in pain for all those who have been killed by the occupation, and all the destruction that happened to our Gaza,” a Gaza woman, Um Ahmed, told Reuters in a tearful voice message.
Freed prisoners arrived in buses, some of them posing from the windows, flashing V-for-Victory signs. The appearance of armed and masked Hamas fighters at the scene underscored the difficulty of resolving Israel’s demand that they disarm.
Israel was due to release 1,700 detainees it captured in Gaza, as well as 250 prisoners from its jails convicted or suspected of security offences, including attacks on Israelis.
-Maayan Lubell, Steven Scheer, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jaidaa Taha
