US president Donald Trump hailed a ‘tremendous day for the Middle East’ as he and regional leaders signed a declaration meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners.
Trump made a lightning visit to Israel, where he lauded prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an address to parliament, before flying to Egypt for a Gaza summit where he and the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey signed the declaration on Monday as guarantors to the ceasefire deal.
‘This is a tremendous day for the world, it’s a tremendous day for the Middle East,’ Trump said as more than two dozen world leaders sat down to talk in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
He later declared that the assembled leaders had ‘achieved what everybody said was impossible’.
‘At long last, we have peace in the Middle East,’ Trump said in a speech.
According to the declaration, the signatories pledged to ‘pursue a comprehensive vision of peace, security and shared prosperity in the region’, and also welcomed ‘the progress achieved in establishing comprehensive and durable peace arrangements in the Gaza Strip’.
But the statement — released in full on Monday night by the White House — was vague about the path ahead for peace between Israel and its neighbours, including the Palestinians, making no mention of a one- or two-state solution.
‘We’re talking about rebuilding Gaza. I’m not talking about single state or double state or two state,’ Trump told reporters en route back to the White House.
Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said the Gaza deal ‘closes a painful chapter in human history’ and sets the stage for a two-state solution.
As part of Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war, Hamas on Monday freed the last 20 surviving hostages it held after two years of captivity in Gaza.
In exchange, Israel released 1,968 mostly Palestinian prisoners held in its jails, its prison service said.
The Israeli military said Tuesday that the remains of four deceased hostages returned by Hamas have been identified, including those of a Nepalese student.
Separately, a Gaza hospital said it has received the bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been handed back by Israel, also as part of US president Donald Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war.
In a statement, the Israeli military named two of the victims as Guy Iluz, an Israeli national, and Bipin Joshi, an agriculture student from Nepal.
The names of the other two hostages have not yet been released at the request of their families, the statement added.
Hamas returned the four bodies on Monday, following the release of all 20 surviving captives as part of the ceasefire deal brokered by Trump.
Meanwhile, the bodies of 45 Palestinians that had been in Israeli custody were handed over to the Nasser Medical Centre in Gaza, the hospital said.
Under the Trump deal, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.
‘The remains of 45 martyrs arrived at the hospital via the Red Cross,’ the hospital said, adding that it was ‘part of the exchange agreement’.
Palestinian members are still holding the bodies of 24 hostages, which are expected to be returned under the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
‘The return of Guy and Bipin brings some measure of comfort to families who have lived with agonising uncertainty and doubt for over two years,’ said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main Israeli group campaigning for the release of all hostages.
‘We will not rest until all 24 hostages are brought home,’ it said.
As Israelis awaited the return of the remaining bodies, the hostages released on Monday were gradually recovering.
‘They have been reunited with their families, undergone blood tests, preliminary examinations and are slowly gaining consciousness,’ said Noa Eliakim Raz, director at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, where some of the surviving hostages are being treated.
‘Being underground affects all the body’s systems,’ she told journalists, adding that many hostages had experienced weight loss.
‘There is no fixed timetable — each person is recovering at their own pace. It’s important that they heal slowly.’
Twins Ziv and Gali Berman, who were reunited on Monday, said they had been separated throughout their captivity and held in complete isolation, according to Channel 12.
The two, who were 28 when abducted, described enduring long periods of hunger, alternating with short intervals when they were better fed, the report said.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed six Palestinians in separate incidents Tuesday, while the military reported its troops had opened fire on suspects who approached their positions.
Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, which operates as a rescue force under Hamas, said five people were killed as they inspected their homes in the Shujaiya district of Gaza City.
Hamas security forces were tightening their grip on Gaza’s ruined cities Tuesday even as global support mounted for a US-backed deal that would see them disarmed.
When bus loads of prisoners freed from Israeli jails arrived in Gaza on Monday, fighters from Hamas’s Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades provided crowd control.
In the north of the territory, as Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza City, the Hamas government’s black-masked armed police resumed street patrols.
Meanwhile, a Hamas security unit has been conducting operations against armed clans and gangs, some alleged to have Israeli backing.
‘Intense clashes broke out — and are still on-going at the moment — as part of efforts to eliminate collaborators,’ said witness Yahya.
