US President-elect stresses urgency of finalizing the ceasefire and hostage release agreement before his inauguration on Monday: ‘It better be done’.
Israel National News
US President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday once again stressed the urgency of finalizing the ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas before his inauguration on Monday.
‘We changed the course of it, and we changed it fast, and frankly, it better be done before I take the oath of office,’ Trump stated during a podcast interview with Dan Bongino.
‘We shook hands, and we signed certain documents, and it better be done,’ he added.
Trump criticized President Joe Biden, claiming he had not contributed to the signing of the agreement.
‘I’m not looking for credit. I want to get these people out,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get them out.’
Trump’s comments came before representatives of Israel, Hamas, the US and Qatar officially signed the hostage deal in Doha early Friday morning (local time), paving the way for Israel’s Security Cabinet to convene later on Friday morning to vote on the agreement.
Earlier on Thursday, Axios reported that officials from the US, Qatar, and Israel credit the involvement of Trump for giving the final push needed to achieve the hostage and ceasefire deal.
According to the report, the coordination between the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration was the factor that created the conditions in which the deal could be reached.
The hostage and ceasefire deal is based on an outline that was presented by the Biden Administration in May 2024, but Hamas refused all ceasefire offers until now. An American official told Axios that Trump’s involvement ‘was the 10 cents missing for the dollar’ that made the deal possible.
In early December 2024, Trump became personally involved in the issue of the hostages held in Gaza when he threatened that there would be ‘all hell to pay’ if the hostages are not freed by the time of his inauguration on January 20 next week.
Trump has repeated that threat multiple times in the weeks since.