Trump: I’d take a hard stance on Gaza Saturday, but can’t say what Israel will do
US president appears to credit his noon deadline for leading Hamas to release three captives as scheduled, says he thinks the terror group ‘should release all the hostages’
US President Donald Trump on Friday said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen at 12 o’clock” the next day, referring to the deadline he put in place earlier this week calling for all hell to come down on Gaza if the remaining hostages are not freed by Saturday at noon.
The deadline — issued amid frustration with the emaciated condition of the hostages released last weekend — would go against the terms of the deal that Israel and Hamas inked last month, with Trump’s prodding.
Israel has apparently sought to gingerly stick with the existing ceasefire deal’s terms without upsetting Trump, sending messages to Hamas through mediators that it is prepared to continue with the deal if the terror group releases three hostages on Saturday as stipulated.
“If it was up to me, I’d take a very hard stance. I can’t tell you what Israel is going to do,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
He then appeared to credit his deadline for leading Hamas to agree to release three hostages on Saturday after the terror group initially threatened not to do so.
“Now I understand that Hamas has totally changed. They want to release hostages again. This started with them saying, ‘We’re not going to release the hostages as we said we were,’” Trump said.
“I said, ‘Good, you have until 12 o’clock on Saturday to do it’… and then all of the sudden two days ago, they said, ‘No, we’ve decided we’re going to release the hostages,'” he continued. “But I think they should release all of the hostages.”
ממליצה לצפות בקטע המלא של טראמפ עונה על מה יקרה מחר ב12:00:״לא יכול להגיד לכם מה ישראל תעשה״ אומר טראמפ ומוסיף: ״ אני הייתי נוקט בעמדה אחרת, אבל זה תלוי. זה תלוי במה שביבי הולך לעשות. זה תלוי במה שישראל הולכת לעשות״ ומספר איך האמירה שלו שינתה את עמדת חמאס pic.twitter.com/fX73YsukI0
— יונה לייבזון yuna leibzon (@YunaLeibzon) February 14, 2025
Trump’s remarks came as Channel 12 news reported that his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff was working to try to secure the release of the remaining living hostages already next week.
After Saturday’s scheduled release of hostages Sagui Dekel-Chen, Sasha Troufanov and Iair Horn, there will be six remaining captives believed to be alive who are slated to be freed before the end of the first phase.
The deal stipulates that those six will be released on February 22 and March 1, but Witkoff is working to move that timeline up, according to the report.
The network separately reported that Witkoff and Trump met this week with GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson, who has been instrumental in ensuring that the hostages’ plight remains at the top of Trump’s agenda.
It also said that during his meeting with four female surveillance soldiers released by Hamas last month, Witkoff told them that he would organize a visit for them to the White House when they feel up to it.
Hamas expects phase 2 talks to start ‘early next week’
A Hamas official meanwhile said Friday that the Palestinian terror group expected indirect negotiations with Israel on the second phase of the ongoing deal to begin “early next week.”
“We expect the second phase of the ceasefire negotiations to begin early next week, and mediators are continuing discussions on this matter,” Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said.
Another source familiar with the talks told AFP that “mediators informed Hamas that they hope to start the second phase of negotiations next week in Doha.”
Under the terms of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the United States — which came into effect on January 19 — negotiations for the second phase were due to start on February 3.
Hamas has said repeatedly that it is prepared to begin the second phase of negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the departure of a negotiating team to Doha on February 8 to discuss technical details of the ongoing agreement but it was not mandated to discuss phase two, which is expected to include the return of the remaining hostages in exchange for an end to the war sparked by the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023.
Recent weeks have seen Hamas release 16 Israelis and five Thai hostages under the arrangement’s first phase, which also requires Israel to free some 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including hundreds of terrorists serving life sentences and lengthy terms for attacks.
Seventy-three of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in the Gaza Strip, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Before the current ceasefire that came into effect in January, the terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
AFP contributed to this report.
