President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post over the weekend that Israel has agreed to a new U.S.-backed Gaza peace deal that would see the immediate release of all 48 of the remaining hostages in Hamas custody, alive and dead, on day one of the new American-guaranteed ceasefire, and an end to the fighting in Gaza as U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Hamas and Israel begin. At the same time, President Trump publicly warned Hamas that they must accept his latest peace deal immediately to prevent the IDF from going forward with its offensive designed to destroy what’s left of Gaza City.
“Everyone wants the Hostages HOME. Everyone wants this War to end!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. “The Israelis have accepted my Terms. It is time for Hamas to accept as well. I have warned Hamas about the consequences of not accepting. This is my last warning, there will not be another one!” Trump warned.
However, Trump issued a similar ultimatum demanding an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza back in March, and he also claimed at the time was his “last warning” before taking strong measures against Hamas. However, the war continued, and Trump did nothing to carry out his threat.
This past weekend, Trump told reporters just before he boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for a brief flight to New York City that, “I think we’re going to have a deal on Gaza very soon.” But he also admitted that trying to end the fighting in Gaza has proven to be far more difficult and time-consuming than he said it would be while he was campaigning for president last year.
In a statement that Trump posted on his Truth Social media platform last week, he declared, “Tell Hamas to IMMEDIATELY give back all 20 [still living] Hostages (Not 2 or 5 or 7!), and things will change rapidly. IT [the fighting in Gaza] WILL END!”
TRUMP AND ISRAEL NO LONGER WANT PARTIAL HAMAS HOSTAGE RELEASES
That statement emphasized the new policy adopted by both the Israeli government and the Trump administration who are no longer willing to accept a partial release of the remaining hostages and are insisting on the release of all 48 remaining hostages (after the bodies of two dead hostages were found by the IDF in Gaza last week), to prevent extending the suffering of the hostages and their family members any further, as we approach the two year mark after they were kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7 attack.
Israeli officials have also conceded that the planned IDF attack on Gaza City will further endanger the 20 or so still living October 7 hostages who are probably being held there, especially in light of orders issued by Hamas leaders for their captors to kill the hostages rather than allow them to be rescued alive by IDF forces.
According to a Jerusalem Post report, Trump’s new plan calls upon Hamas to release all 48 hostages, including those believed to be alive and the bodies of at least 26 hostages known to be dead, on the very first day of the ceasefire agreement. In exchange, President Trump will offer his personal assurances that fighting in Gaza will not resume while the negotiations between Israel and Hamas continue and, hopefully, finally yield a permanent peace agreement.
HOSTAGE FAMILIES CALL TRUMP’S PEACE OFFER A “TRUE BREAKTHROUGH
The reaction of the Hostages Families Forum to the reported details of Trump’s latest Gaza peace proposal was predictably optimistic. It said in a statement, “If the proposal attributed to President Trump has indeed been placed on the table, it represents a true breakthrough.
“President Trump has presented an agreement for the immediate release of all 48 hostages, alongside a full halt to the war for the duration of the negotiations,” the statement continued.
“The personal guarantee of the President of the United States is a historic step without precedent. Such an agreement would advance a broader regional settlement, secure the release of all hostages, allow [Israeli] soldiers and reservists to return home to rebuild their families and livelihoods, and lay the foundation for Israel’s security — ending a war that has dragged on for nearly two years.”
The statement concluded, “We call on the Government of Israel to declare its unequivocal support for the emerging agreement and to provide President Trump with full backing until every hostage returns home — the living for rehabilitation, and the fallen for a dignified burial in their homeland.”
The new plan would require Israeli troops in Gaza to be partially withdrawn, though some Israeli soldiers would be allowed to remain in certain designated security zones within Gaza. The proposal also calls upon Israel to release between 2,000 and 3,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including some convicted of murder, and to start negotiations with Hamas to bring the war in Gaza to a permanent close.
If Hamas accepts the Trump peace plan in time, Israel would also be required to cancel the imminent implementation of the IDF’s scorched-earth plan for the military conquest and destruction of what remains of Gaza City.
THE IDF’S NEW OPERATION IN GAZA CITY HAS ALREADY STARTED
But in the meantime, the IDF has started the demolition process by blowing up another high-rise building each day in Gaza City that it claims is being used by Hamas for military purposes.
Israel’s Defense Minister, Israel Katz, warned that once the Gaza City operation is fully launched by the IDF, the city’s doom will be sealed. “Once the door opens, it will not close, and IDF activity will intensify until the Hamas murderers… accept Israel’s conditions to end the war, foremost among them the release of all the hostages and disarmament, or they will be destroyed,” Katz declared.
However, even the IDF’s chief of staff, General Eyal Zamir, has expressed his opposition to the conquest of Gaza City, for fear that it might make the IDF solely responsible for the well-being and safety of all of Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinian residents.
IDF BATTLING A CRITICAL SHORTAGE OF SPARE PARTS FOR ITS WEAPONS
Israeli defense officials also admit that the IDF, as it prepares for the assault on Gaza City, is suffering from a shortage of spare parts for the maintenance and repair of its tanks and armored personnel carriers, due to the wear and tear and combat damage they have suffered during “a long war the likes of which we have never before experienced.”
The parts shortage has been intensified by the arms embargoes that have recently been imposed on Israel by European arms suppliers such as Germany, which manufactures the engines used in Israeli-built tanks, as a punishment for the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza being reported by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health.
The IDF will also go into the Gaza City operation with only 60 to 70 percent availability of its American-manufactured fleet of D-9 armored Caterpillar bulldozers used to clear away the rubble generated by combat operations and to knock down fortified Hamas positions. Fortunately, about half of the latest Israeli order of 132 new bulldozers, whose delivery was deliberately delayed by the Biden administration, have now been delivered to the IDF, and three private Israeli firms have been hired to expedite the repair and maintenance of the bulldozers, which are critical to IDF ground operations in the built-up areas of Gaza.
Another challenge still facing the IDF is the sporadic ballistic missile and drone attacks being launched at targets in Israel by the Houthis in Yemen using Iran-supplied weapons. These include one drone, which managed to penetrate Israel’s normally reliable air defenses last week to damage a passenger terminal at the Assaf Ramon International Airport just north of Eilat in the Southern Negev Desert.
HOUTHI DRONE STRIKE INJURES FIVE PEOPLE AT EILAT’S AIRPORT
The airport opened in 2019 as a replacement for the old Eilat airport, which was located inside the city. It serves around 2 million passengers each year (compared to 14.5 million passengers who used Ben Gurion airport last year) on scheduled flights from low-cost airlines as well as chartered tourist flights from various European countries. While the Eilat airport has been targeted before by Houthi missiles and drones fired from Yemen, it has managed to remain operational through most of the period since the start of the Gaza war.
The most recent drone strike inflicted non-lethal shrapnel injuries to five people in the passenger terminal and forced the airport to close its air operations for several hours. However, two other drones launched from Yemen the same day were successfully shot down before entering Israeli airspace. Why the third drone was able to get through and damage the airport is still being investigated by Israeli defense officials.
The Houthi drone attack that damaged Eilat’s airport took place just a few days after the Israeli air force carried out a devastating precision air strike two weeks ago, which killed the Houthi prime minister and several of his senior cabinet officials. That raid was in retaliation for more than 70 ballistic missiles and more than 23 drones that the Houthis have launched against Israel in support of Hamas since March 18, when Israel ended the most recent ceasefire in the Gaza war.
Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, Yemen has harassed or targeted more than 100 commercial ships in the international waters of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, choking off maritime traffic at the Israeli port of Eilat and effectively closing Egypt’s Suez Canal to international shipping.
But while Israel and the United States have launched numerous retaliatory air strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, including the deadly August 28 Israeli raid, the Houthis have stubbornly continued to blockade international shipping passing through the normally busy oil tanker and commercial shipping lanes in the area, and their intermittent drone and missile attacks against Israel.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that in addition to the objection raised by IDF chief of staff General Eyal Zamir, other Israeli military analysts, such as retired Colonel Gabi Siboni, have also expressed serious doubts that, after almost two years of fighting Hamas without gaining a decisive victory, the IDF will now be able to achieve that goal by laying siege for a few weeks to Gaza City.
THE CHALLENGE OF MOVING GAZA CITY CIVILIANS OUT OF HARM’S WAY
But those doubts have not daunted Defense Minister Katz, who issued a warning to Hamas this week on his X social media account by declaring, “Today a tremendous hurricane will hit the skies of Gaza City. Release the hostages and put down your weapons — or Gaza will be ruined and you will be destroyed.”
The IDF has also begun the distribution of leaflets printed in Arabic, warning the residents of the Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City to evacuate the area while they still can do so in relative safety.
The leaflets said, “In the coming days, the IDF will carry out precise, targeted strikes against terrorist infrastructure that poses a direct threat to IDF troops.
“Before the strikes, numerous measures will be taken to minimize the risk of harming civilians as much as possible, including targeted warnings, the use of precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and additional intelligence.”
However, only about 100,000 people out of Gaza City’s estimated civilian population of one million people, have heeded the latest Israeli warning to evacuate their homes and seek shelter in one of the humanitarian enclaves that the IDF has set up for them in southern Gaza, for fear that if they leave, they might never be able to return to their former homes in Gaza City.
Israeli defense officials expect many more residents to move south, to get out of harm’s way, as the IDF intensifies its attacks on Gaza City. The humanitarian facilities that Israel has already set up in southern Gaza have the capacity to care for up to two million civilian refugees in accordance with the standards set by international law. The same Israeli officials also say that they are determined to keep the displaced Gaza City residents adequately supplied with “food, medical supplies, hygiene products and shelter equipment.”
However, Ynet reports that Hamas is also actively preventing civilians from leaving Gaza City using both propaganda and physical pressure. According to the recording released by the IDF, a Gaza City resident recently told an Israeli soldier, “We want to go south, but Hamas is waiting for us on the way. They tell people: go back home, there is no evacuation, go back, go back — and the people are scattering.”
The Gaza City resident added that “People are really afraid” to risk defying the Hamas orders. “Some of [us] are going through side streets and looking for alternative ways. [But] Hamas [fighters are] standing on the seashore near Al-Nablsi and in other places, preventing the population from moving along the main roads.”
HOW TRUMP’S NEW PEACE PROPOSAL WAS GENERATED
According to an Israeli Channel 12 report, Trump’s latest Gaza peace proposal was developed by his special envoy and chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, while playing a round of golf a couple of weeks ago. Witkoff then reportedly cleared the plan last week during a meeting in Paris with Qatari officials who had been mediating earlier peace talks between Israel and Hamas.
Other Israeli news reports said that those involved in delivering Trump’s latest Gaza peace proposal to Hamas included Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin and Palestinian-American activist Bishara Bahbah, who has been serving as an unofficial member of the U.S. negotiating team by liaising with Hamas negotiators.
In an interview with the Saudi Arabian-based al-Arabiya international TV-news channel, Bahabh said, “There was a meeting in Washington that, according to what I know, lasted six hours, and [in which] it was decided that there would be one final proposal on the table: the release of all the [hostages] and an end to the war.”
Bahbah said that when he first contacted Hamas officials to deliver the new Trump peace deal to them, “they were skeptical [because] they didn’t know if it was something official.” However, once they saw President Trump’s social media post demanding a prompt end to the war in Gaza, he said they “were convinced it was official, and immediately responded that they agreed to his deal.”
Bahbah then referenced a statement released by the Hamas leadership last week, which said that it was willing “to enter into a comprehensive deal in which all enemy prisoners held by the resistance will be freed in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation [Israel].” The same Hamas statement declared that Hamas is now willing to agree to the formation of “an independent national administration of technocrats” to run Gaza after the fighting stops. However, we have seen Hamas leaders back away from similar promises several times since Hamas started the war in Gaza two years ago with the October 7 invasion.
In an updated statement Hamas released over the weekend, it claimed to be ready to “immediately sit at the negotiating table to discuss the release of all hostages in exchange for a clear declaration of an end to the way, a full [IDF] withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and the formation of a committee to administer the Gaza Strip [consisting of] independent Palestinians, which will [begin] its work immediately.”
HAMAS RELEASES ANOTHER PROPAGANDA HOSTAGE VIDEO
However, that did not prevent Hamas from releasing last week another horrifying propaganda video of two Israeli hostages, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Alon Ohel, 700 days after they were kidnapped during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival. In the video, to which Hamas added the message, “Time is running out,” Gilboa-Dalal said that he couldn’t believe that he was still alive after spending 22 months in Hamas captivity.
He also said that he was being held with some other hostages in Gaza City, and that he was afraid that he might be killed if the IDF went forward with its announced plans to attack the city. He also said that he feared that Hamas would continue to use the hostages as human shields anywhere else in Gaza where the IDF launches its attacks.
That threat was explicitly confirmed by prominent Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida during the last public speech he made before being killed by a targeted IDF strike two weeks ago, in which he said that Hamas intends to keep the hostages “as much as possible” near its fighters to serve as human shields. As a result, the IDF has instructed its troops to use extreme caution when entering any building still standing in Gaza City, and to be conscious of the possibility that a hostage may be held inside any building that they may seek to demolish by using explosive charges instead of trying to clear it through a riskier room-by-room search.
Hamas now claims that it “welcome[s] any [American] move that contributes to the efforts being made to halt the aggression [by Israel] against our people.” In addition, Hamas told Sky News Arabia that it is considering Trump’s proposal with “a positive spirit,” and that the appropriate parties are handling the proposal with “great responsibility.”
Bahbah also said in his interview that Trump has been putting heavy pressure on Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu to accept his latest plan to end the war in Gaza and that he has also delivered that message to the Hamas leadership.
The unofficial American mediator also said that the war in Gaza “could be ended in two weeks” if both sides are serious about the negotiations, and that there are more “positive signs” than ever before about the potential for a peace deal.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office sent a statement to reporters saying that Israel was “giving very serious consideration” to President Trump’s new Gaza peace proposal, but added pessimistically that “Hamas will likely persist in its intransigence.”
The seemingly positive Hamas initial response to Trump’s proposal was viewed as a cynical attempt to deter Israel from going forward with its announced plans to invade and destroy Gaza City. A second statement issued by Netanyahu’s office said, “This is more spin by Hamas, containing nothing new.”
An unnamed source in Netanyahu’s office also told an Israeli reporter that, in the end, Hamas was likely to reject the Trump proposal because “Hamas would essentially be giving up the hostages on day one in return for a [Trump] presidential guarantee. As important as that may be, what happens if the negotiations collapse? Hamas would have lost all of its leverage.”
NETANYAHU’S LATEST LIST OF DEMANDS FROM HAMAS
Another statement issued by the prime minister’s office said that the war in Gaza could end immediately if Hamas agrees to these five conditions:
- The release of all hostages
- The disarmament of Hamas
- The demilitarization of the Gaza Strip
- Complete Israeli security control in Gaza, and
- “The establishment of an alternative [Palestinian] civilian administration [in Gaza] that does not indoctrinate for terror, does not dispatch terror, and does not threaten Israel.”
Defense Minister Katz called upon Hamas to either accept Israel’s conditions for ending the war in Gaza, including the release of all hostages and the disarmament of Hamas fighters, or see Gaza City “become [destroyed] like Rafah and Beit Hanoun.” Katz also accused Hamas of continuing to “deceive and utter empty words,” in its public relations war against Israel.
The leader of the opposition in the Knesset to Netanyahu’s coalition, Yair Lapid, said that while the Israeli government “does not have to accept Hamas’ conditions, it must immediately return to negotiations and try to close a deal.”
As the head of the largest opposition party in the Knesset, Lapid has led the weekly public protests, which began long before the October 7 Hamas attack and were originally aimed at undermining public support for Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition government because of its proposed reforms to the liberal-dominated Israeli court system. But Lapid has also suggested that if Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners threaten to bring down his government in protest, were Netanyahu to accept Trump’s latest peace proposal for Gaza, he and other members of the Knesset opposition would prop up Netanyahu’s government long enough for the peace deal to be implemented.
NEW STUDY REFUTES LIBELOUS CRITICISMS OF IDF ACTIONS IN GAZA
Meanwhile, a newly published study from the highly respected Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at the Hebrew University thoroughly debunks the pro-Hamas libel against Israel, falsely claiming that it has been committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza by deliberately withholding adequate supplies of food and humanitarian aid since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.
In their 311-page report, titled “Debunking the Genocide Allegations: A Reexamination of the Israel-Hamas War (2023-2025)” the authors, led by Professor Danny Orbach, a Harvard trained professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, challenges the accuracy of the accusations made against Israel’s conduct during the post-October 7 war in Gaza by various international organizations and courts. It also criticizes the recently adopted resolution by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, which seeks to change the legal definition of the crime of genocide specifically to fit the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza.
The study’s most controversial findings were that Israel permitted much more food to enter Gaza during the war than indicated by the reports in the mainstream news media, and that Israel was falsely accused of following a deliberate policy designed to create a state of famine and widespread starvation for Gaza’s civilian population.
REVISED FOOD DELIVERY STATISTICS SHOW STARVATION IN GAZA WAS A MYTH
The study also found no basis for the U.N.’s claim that before the October 7, 2023, attack, Gaza was receiving 500 truckloads a day of food to meet the dietary needs of its civilian population. Instead, the delivery records from that period show that the average number of food truck deliveries during the previous year, 2022, was actually 73, compared to the average of 101 food truck deliveries per day after the war in Gaza started, according to the records of Israel’s COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).
The study’s researchers also found that the COGAT food truck delivery statistics were far more reliable than those published by the U.N.’s UNRWA Palestinian refugee support agency. For example, UNRWA drastically undercounted the number of food trucks that Israel permitted to enter during the IDF’s operations last year in Rafah, but when UNRWA later retroactively corrected those reports, it failed to announce the change, so the mainstream media continued to publicize the incorrect initial UNRWA statistics which gave the false impression that Israel was trying to starve Gaza’s civilian population.
Since Israel was actually permitting Gaza to receive more food deliveries per day after the war started than before, the reports of widespread food shortages and death by starvation during the war can only be attributed to the fact that Hamas was systematically stealing the donated food deliveries for its own uses and for resale on Gaza’s black market to the civilian population at grossly inflated prices.
EXPOSING HAMAS’ FAKED GAZA CASUALTY STATISTICS
Another section of the new study echoed previous criticisms by Israeli demographic experts of the casualty figures published by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health (GMOH), which have been widely accepted as accurate by many mainstream international news media outlets, including some of those based in Israel.
The study’s analysis of the GMOH casualty figures found that they deliberately obscured the remarkably low combatant-to-civilian death ratio in the Gaza war due to the IDF’s extreme measures taken to minimize collateral damage. For example, the GMOH figures falsely counted the age-related natural deaths of women in Gaza as being due to combat, while deliberately reducing the reported number of Hamas male fighters who actually did die in combat with Israel.
The new study’s researchers also found that, contrary to mainstream media reports, the humanitarian safe evacuation zones that the IDF set up in designated areas of Gaza, such as Mawasi, were actually much safer places for the civilian population than the rest of the Gaza Strip.
IDENTIFY “HUMANITARIAN BIAS” IN GAZA REPORTING
The study researchers also identified a disturbing new phenomenon, which they called “humanitarian bias,” which they used to explain what the authors perceive as systematic errors in conflict reporting. They defined this as “a tendency among [humanitarian] aid organizations [working in Gaza] to accept [without question] alarming claims from stakeholders in order to mobilize urgent action.”
As an example of humanitarian bias, the report cited an incident in May 2025, when Tom Fletcher, the U.N.’s Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told the BBC in an interview that 14,000 babies in Gaza were at risk of dying within the next 48 hours if the U.N. could not reach them with aid. When the BBC reporter then asked Fletcher where that number of babies at risk came from, he replied that they came from reliable U.N. aid teams on the ground.
Yet just two days later, the U.N. retracted Fletcher’s initial statement and sharply downplayed the level of risk facing the babies in Gaza. Yet it is highly unlikely that any of the members BBC’s worldwide audience who heard Fletcher’s original dire assessment ever heard that correction.
AN HONEST MIXED PICTURE OF THE IDF’S PERFORMANCE IN GAZA
While the study thoroughly debunked the genocide accusations against Israel in Gaza, it did note and criticize what it called “isolated incidents” of negligence and misconduct by individual Israeli soldiers in Gaza. But, it also reported that it found “no evidence… of overarching [IDF] directives aimed at harming civilians.”
The Begin-Sadat Center’s report also credited the IDF for taking “unprecedented steps such as early warnings, precision targeting, and mission [cancellations] to avoid civilian harm. . . [even though such actions were] costly to the IDF, [but deemed worthwhile because they] reduced non-combatant casualties.”
The report’s findings directly contradict and disprove the false and exaggerated accusations of wrongdoing and war crimes committed by Israel during the Gaza war made by various U.N. agencies and the International Court of Justice. It concludes with an acknowledgment that while “the suffering of civilians in Gaza is both tragic and undeniable,” humanitarian discourse must remain “anchored in verifiable facts.”
