US President Donald Trump said on Friday (July 18) that 10 Israeli hostages will be released “very shortly” from Gaza. The statement came amid the push for the 60-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas amid the ongoing war. “We got most of the hostages back. We’re going to have another 10 coming very shortly, and we hope to have that finished quickly,” the American president said during a dinner with Republican senators. He also praised his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, as “fantastic”.
The new ceasefire proposal pushes for the release of the 10 hostages and the remains of 18 others in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. Meanwhile, earlier on the same day, it was reported that the director of the Mossad visited the US this week in the hope that Trump would support Israel’s offer to ask other countries to take in the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still living in Gaza. The chief, David Barnea, told Witkoff that Israel has discussed relocating Palestinians to Ethiopia, Indonesia and Libya.
Earlier on July 1, the US president had posted on his social media platform Truth Social that Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza. Last week, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House and presented Trump with a copy of a letter he had sent to the Nobel committee nominating the president for a Nobel Peace Prize.