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14-10-2025
JERUSALEM/ GAZA STRIP: Israel and Hamas are set to exchange 20 Israeli captives held in Gaza for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in the coming hours.
US President Donald Trump has said the war in Gaza is over as he flew to the Middle East, where he will address the Israeli Knesset and co-chair a summit in Egypt on the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinians continue to return to what is left of their homes in northern Gaza as desperately needed humanitarian aid begins trickling into the Strip. But officials say food, medicine and other essentials remain in critically short supply.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed at least 67,806 people and wounded 170,066 since October 2023. A total of 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023, attacks, and about 200 were taken captive.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel couldn’t have achieved its victory without its military achievements inside Gaza. He was essentially touting the term “absolute victory” that he’s been talking about for the last two years and on the same day, Netanyahu’s military chief of staff said that the Israeli forces are declaring victory over Hamas in Gaza but it’s worth mentioning that Israel has not achieved any of its goals or objectives that they laid out for the war through military means, but rather through ceasefire agreements and negotiations.
And on the eve of the release of Israeli captives from Gaza, family members say they feel immense joy, but still a sense of cautious optimism, saying that until their loved ones are back home, they are not going to feel that sense of relief.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump is set to travel to Israel on Monday.
He’s arriving around 9:30am local time (06:30 GMT). He will then address the Israeli parliament before leaving and heading to Sharm el-Sheikh for a summit with more than 20 world leaders.
We’ve been speaking to Palestinians returning to northern Gaza about the prospects of an end to Israel’s war.
There was hope, but also scepticism.
“There are positive indicators, and we hope I am one of the people that was displaced from the south. I have returned, and we are very optimistic,” one man said.
Another said that true peace requires the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“I don’t think the war will be back in full but talking about peace… what peace? If there isn’t just peace and the establishment of a Palestinian state, there will not be any peace,” he told media. “Trump’s deal does not include a Palestinian state. The peace that Trump is calling for is the peace of normalization and the Abraham Accords. I don’t think there will be true peace.”
It was a very cheerful President Trump who boarded Air Force One for his journey to the Middle East.
He held what is called a “gaggle” with reporters and expressed extreme confidence about the ceasefire holding in the first phase of his 20-point peace plan.
He did say that there were no written guarantees from many of the partners. However, he appeared to imply that his personality was strong enough to persuade them to meet what they need to do to get the ceasefire off the ground and the rest of the peace plan going.
He also spoke about his relationship with the Israeli prime minister, obviously a critical player in what happens over the next few days, weeks and months, saying that although they’ve had their differences, Benjamin Netanyahu is a great man and a great leader, a wartime leader, as he described.
He didn’t get into much of the finer details in terms of what’s going to happen as this plan rolls out. (Int’l News Desk)
