PNN – Hebrew media reported that U.S. President Donald Trump will not force Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to begin the second phase of the Gaza agreement.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, citing Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, on Tuesday a Israeli newspaper reported that the Trump administration is pressuring Netanyahu to start the second phase of the Gaza agreement before returning the body of the last Israeli captive. However, this pressure will not become coercion.
Under the plan proposed by U.S. President Trump, the first phase of the agreement, which began on 10 October, included a ceasefire and prisoner exchange.
Within this framework, Palestinian groups handed over 20 live Israeli captives and the bodies of 27 others, and are still searching for the body of Ran Gueili, the last captive, while Gaza faces widespread destruction caused by the genocidal war.
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Israel has made the start of negotiations for the second phase conditional on the return of this captive’s body. According to Israel Hayom, Washington informed Tel Aviv that even after entering the second phase, the search for the body of the last captive will continue.
The newspaper added that in messages sent over the past 12 hours, U.S. officials emphasized that the results of the first phase exceeded Israel’s expectations, with more live captives and bodies returned than initially estimated, as Hamas was expected to retain at least some of the bodies.
However, Trump’s team does not want to impose the start of the second phase on Israel and prefers to secure Netanyahu’s consent.
American sources in internal Washington discussions said that Netanyahu is concerned that if he announces the second phase before the return of Ran Gueili, he will face severe domestic criticism.
According to the same sources, the U.S. plan will ultimately lead to Hamas being disarmed—a matter that faces serious doubts in the occupied territories regarding the ability of the future International Security Force (ISF) to implement it. In response, Hamas has stated that if the occupation ends, it is ready to hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the occupied territories Mike Huckabee expressed hope that Ran Gueili would be returned within 24 to 48 hours.
The ceasefire agreement was intended to end the war that Israel, with U.S. support, launched in Gaza on 8 October 2023—a war that left more than 70,000 Palestinians dead and 171,000 injured, most of them women and children. Nevertheless, Israeli forces continue to violate the ceasefire daily, and according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, on Tuesday alone 377 Palestinians were killed and 987 injured.
Israel is also preventing sufficient food and medicine from entering besieged Gaza, where approximately 2.4 million Palestinians live in catastrophic conditions.