Gaza deal very soon – US President Trump
As the Israel-Hamas war enters Day 703 Monday, 8th September, 2025, US President Donald Trump has again said that the belligerents will reach a ceasefire “very soon,” the same thing he has been saying in recent times. He did not give details.
“I think we’re going to have a deal on Gaza very soon,” The Times of Israel cites Trump as telling reporters as he returned to Washington from New York.
Trump admitted that getting a deal with the duo was tough. “It’s a hell of a problem,” he admitted. “It’s a problem we want to solve for the Middle East, for Israel, for everybody. It’s a problem we’re going to get done.”
Trump said that Hamas was holding an indefinite number of hostages, but added, “it could be a little bit less than 20 because they tend to die, even though they’re young people largely, they tend to die.”
Israel, a strong ally of the US in the region, has said that the Islamist Hamas was still holding 48 hostages in Gaza, declaring 26 of them dead, 20 alive, and unsure of the fate of another two.
Trump has, in the past few weeks, claimed that fewer than 20 hostages were still alive. “We have, let’s say, 20 people, and we have 38 bodies,” Trump told reporters, conflicting with the official Israeli count of bodies, which is 26.
Trump added that he believed that all the hostages would be returned, dead or alive: “I think we’re going to get them all.”
The hostilities broke out following an unprecedented armed onslaught unleased on Israel by the Palestinian terror group, Hamas (Islamic Resistance), on 7th October 2023.
The group, which has vowed to destroy Israel, whom it calls occupiers, killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and abducted some 250 others into its tunnels in Gaza.
Attempts to cut a permanent ceasefire have been impossible as both groups have shared little common grounds on it.
Israel, under tremendous pressure from the UN and the global community to stop the war, has insisted that Hamas must disarm, release all the hostages and cease from ruling Gaza.
On the other hand, Hamas, backed majorly by Iran and Qatar, has doubled down accusing Israel of killing thousands of Palestinian civilians, a propaganda that has served its purpose of delegitimising Israel very well.
Gaza, a tiny strip of land bordered by Egypt and Israel, is virtually in ruins with starvation running riots among the civil population.
Hamas seems content with fighting dressed in mufti, mingling with the civil population, most of which supports their adventurism, thus heightening the Palestinian casualties in the hostilities.
While many countries call for a two-state solution to end the intractable conflict, Hamas insists that “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free,” meaning that Israel must cease to exist. Israel had, until the ongoing war, on several occasions, agreed to the two-state paradigm.
