Israel-Gaza ceasefire latest: Trump not confident truce deal will hold as Palestinians return to their homes

Donald Trump has said Hamas is weakened, but he is hardly certain that the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas will hold.

“I’m not confident,” the new US President told reporters. “That’s not our war. It’s their war.”

He said his administration “might” help rebuild Gaza, which he compared to a “massive demolition site.”

“Some beautiful things could be done with it,” said Trump, the real estate developer turned commander in chief, noting the territory’s coastline and “phenomenal” weather and location. “Some fantastic things could be done with Gaza. Some beautiful things could be done with Gaza.”

A British-Israeli hostage is “in high spirits and on the road to recovery,” her mother has said, during the first public comments made by the relatives of the three women freed from captivity in Gaza on Sunday.

Speaking from Sheba hospital in Tel Aviv where the women are still being evaluated, Mandy Damari said her daughter Emily, 28 was recovering well, despite having lost two fingers on her left hand. She thanked those who helped secure Emily’s release “from the bottom of our hearts” and urged people to “keep on fighting for the remaining 94 hostages.”

“There are too many other families waiting to hug their loved ones or bring them back for a proper burial,” she added.

The Independent’s chief international correspondent Bel Trew has the full story:

Australia has been grappling with a spate of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war in late 2023.

Authorities have designated some of the incidents as terrorism and vowed to crack down on the perpetrators amid concerns of further escalation, with half a dozen incidents occurring across Sydney in the past month alone.

Police in the state of New South Wales, that has Sydney as its capital, have arrested forty people for antisemitic offences and eight relation to arson.

Turkey could restart trade with Israel “if peace is permanent”, Nail Olpak, head of the Turkish Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK), said on Tuesday.

Turkey severed trade with Israel last year over its war in Gaza with the Palestinian militant group Hamas. This week Israel and Hamas began carrying out a complex ceasefire deal.

The UN body responsible for monitoring human rights violations in the Palestinian territories has said it is “alarmed by a wave of renewed violence” by settlers and Israeli security forces in the occupied West Bank.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Palestine (OHCHR Palestine) noted that the violence coincides “with the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire agreement and the release of hostages and detainees”.

“This has been accompanied by increased restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement across the West Bank, including complete closure of some checkpoints and installation of new gates, effectively confining entire communities,” it said.

The statement comes amid reports that at least 12 Palestinians were injured after being assaulted by settlers in two West Bank villages.

As a ceasefire brought calm to Gaza’s ruined cities, Hamas was quick to emerge from hiding.

The militant group has not only survived 15 months of war with Israel — among the deadliest and most destructive in recent memory — but it remains firmly in control of the coastal territory that now resembles an apocalyptic wasteland. With a surge of humanitarian aid promised as part of the ceasefire deal, the Hamas-run government said on Monday that it will coordinate distribution to the desperate people of Gaza.

For all the military might Israel deployed in Gaza, it failed to remove Hamas from power, one of its central war aims. That could make a return to fighting more likely, but the results might be the same.

There was an element of theatre in Sunday’s handover of three Israeli hostages to the Red Cross, when dozens of masked Hamas fighters wearing green headbands and military fatigues paraded in front of cameras and held back a crowd of hundreds who surrounded the vehicles.

The scenes elsewhere in Gaza were even more remarkable: Thousands of Hamas-run police in uniform re-emerged, making their presence known even in the most heavily destroyed areas.

“The police have been here the whole time, but they were not wearing their uniforms” to avoid being targeted by Israel, said Mohammed Abed, a father of three who returned to his home in Gaza City more than seven months after fleeing the area.

“They were among the displaced people in the tents. That’s why there were no thefts,” he said.

Former Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have welcomed US president Donald Trump’s decision to revoke sanctions on Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

“I welcome the historic decision of incoming US President Donald Trump to lift the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration,” Ben-Gvir, former national security minister, wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

“This is a righting of an injustice of many years, in which distorted policies were pursued by the American administration and also by local elements who confused lovers with enemies,” he said. “Now, all that remains is to hope for a change in policy towards the terrorist organisation Hamas, in a way that will not allow them oxygen and deals that help them continue their activities.”

Mr Smotrich, former finance miniter, hailed the move as he called the sanctions “a serious act of blatant foreign interference in the internal affairs of the State of Israel”.

-He said that the decision “harmed the principles of democracy and the mutual relationship between the two friendly countries”.

Israel expects president Donald Trump to lift the Biden administration’s restriction on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs, outgoing Israeli ambassador to the US Mike Herzog told Axios.

Joe Biden had decided to halt the delivery of the weapons last May as a marker of protest against Israel’s ground offensive in Rafah, leading to a crisis in the relationship between the two countries.

A 2,000-pound bomb, previously used by the US in the Vietnam War, is an air-dropped munition that can carry a higher payload because it doesn’t have an engine.

It’s one of the larger munitions in the US inventory, Ryan Brobst, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies’ Center on Military and Political Power, earlier told AP.

The 2,000-pound bomb has multiple variants – some are designed to penetrate deep, underground targets while others detonate above ground and cause widespread damage. Depending on the variant, and whether the munition is dropped in an open or urban area, its blast radius can be as far as a quarter mile away or a much more confined area.

The bombs are “dumb” or unguided bombs but can be turned into more precise weapons with the addition of Joint Direct Attack Munition kits which add a tail fin and navigation.

Three Israeli hostages released by Hamas on Sunday night were handed “gift bags” adorned with the Qassam Brigades’ logo as they entered a Red Cross vehicle in Gaza City.

The first three hostages released as part of a ceasefire deal – Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and Emily Damari – were each presented with a paper bag by a masked Hamas militant before boarding the vehicle. Footage released by the Israel Defense Forces later that evening showed the hostages carrying the bags, though the Qassam Brigades’ logo had been blurred out.

Inside the bags were certificates, necklaces, and photos, according to a family representative of Ms Gonen, who spoke to CNN. The materials were reportedly confiscated by Israel’s Internal Security Agency, the Shin Bet, and their exact content remains undisclosed. However, Israeli media reported that the photographs depicted the hostages’ time in captivity.

A certificate presented by the militants read “release decision” in both Hebrew and Arabic. The exchange was formalised with a Red Cross representative signing an Arabic-language document titled “Acknowledgment of Receipt of Israeli Prisoners.”

It stated: “I, the representative of the International Red Cross, acknowledge that I have received from the Izz Eddin al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, a total of three prisoners, who are…” followed by the names of the hostages.