US President Donald Trump expressed optimism that there would be a Gaza deal soon, saying that tremendous progress on the issue has been made, while speaking at the Oval Office on Monday.
He also said that he has received "strong signals from Iran that they'd like to see this done."
Trump explained that he did not tell Netanyahu to stop being negative about the hostage deal, and revealed that Hamas has been agreeing to very important things. This was after a report from Axios on Friday said that the US leader told Netanyahu that he was “always so f***ing negative” when the Israeli leader expressed reservations about what Hamas was actually agreeing to.
Trump also added that he spoke to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the phone.
Erdogan, an ally of Hamas and vocal critic of Israel, has helped broker the deal, according to Trump, who urged him to make sure Hamas didn't say "no" to the ceasefire proposal.
Netanyahu grudgingly accepted plan
The US president previously admitted to pressuring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting his 20-point plan to release the hostages, warning him he has “got to be fine with it.”
At a glance, Trump's 20-point plan involves the release of all the remaining hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners, a phased IDF pullback, deployment of an international stabilization forces, explicit ban on any future Hamas role in governance, the dismantling of offensive infrastucture (including tunnels), and a transition to Palestinian Authority (PA)- led self-rule contingent on reforms and security benchmarks.