Hamas faces annihilation if it tries to cling to power in Gaza, US President Donald Trump warned on Sunday, as Israel and the Gaza terror group sent delegations to Egypt ahead of talks on Trump’s plan to return the hostages and end the war.
Trump’s warning to Hamas came as reports emerged that the US president held an acrimonious call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he reportedly became annoyed at the Israeli leader, telling him to stop being “so fucking negative.” Israeli sources downplayed the disagreement.
Asked by CNN on Sunday what would happen if the terror group will not relinquish power, Trump responded by text, “Complete obliteration!”
The terror group has said repeatedly it does not want to remain the sole ruler of Gaza, but it has not consented to its total disarmament and has demanded some role in a future Palestinian state.
Speaking to reporters later in the day at the White House, Trump expressed optimism that the deal was going to move ahead, despite serious gaps between Israel and Hamas on core elements of his plan.
“We don’t need flexibility, because everyone has pretty much agreed to it,” said Trump. “But there’ll always be some changes,” he added.
“You get the hostages back almost immediately. Negotiations are going on right now, will probably take a couple of days,” he continued.
Families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, in a sukkah outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, with photographs of the hostages, on October 5, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)
Guarded optimism over an agreement also came from the relatives of hostages held in Gaza, and Muslim countries that are in contact with Hamas.
But the negotiations face obstacles: Hamas said it is prepared to release the hostages it is holding, but is expected to make additional demands regarding the Israeli military’s withdrawal from the Strip, and the terror group’s leadership is reportedly split over the deal. Netanyahu is likewise working to quell opposition to the agreement within his own government.
After successfully pushing for some changes, Netanyahu accepted the plan during his visit to Washington last week, but has been more circumspect than the president.
He also “wasn’t happy with the Hamas response” to Trump’s plan on Friday, an Israeli source told The Times of Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds his first meeting with new Shin Bet chief David Zini on October 5, 2025. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)
Axios reported earlier on Sunday that Trump told Netanyahu during a tense Friday call after Hamas responded to the plan, “I don’t know why you’re always so fucking negative. This is a win. Take it.”
The Israeli source told The Times of Israel that there was indeed a disagreement, but that it was not acrimonious. “That’s all. He didn’t think it was a yes. There was a push [from Trump] to accept it and move forward.”
Hamas was surprised by the extent to which Trump embraced the group’s response to his proposal for ending the war, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.
However, the group’s abroad leadership was also “annoyed” by Trump’s latest threat over the weekend to blow up the deal if Hamas did not move quickly to release the hostages, with the Arab diplomat maintaining that Hamas has already demonstrated goodwill by expressing willingness to release all remaining hostages, without securing a more significant withdrawal of Israeli troops beforehand.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir (center) is seen on Gaza’s coast in the Netzarim Corridor area south of Gaza City, October 5, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
Hamas is also seeking clarity regarding the terms of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in the Cairo talks, the Arab diplomat said.
While the White House published a map demarcating the three phases of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the Arab mediators understand the image to be illustrative and are looking to get more clarity regarding the redeployment of Israeli troops in order to bring Hamas on board, the diplomat said.
PM: Hostages first, or nothing else happens
Netanyahu held a meeting with his negotiating team on Sunday afternoon, before they flew to Cairo to participate in talks on Monday.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, will lead the team, Netanyahu said late Sunday, despite earlier reports that Dermer would only join based on progress in the talks.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s close adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will not be joining the talks right away.
US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff (L) and Jared Kushner await the arrival of President Donald Trump at Teterboro Airport, from where they will motorcade to attend the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final, July 13, 2025. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
Government hostage pointman Gal Hirsch will be attending. On Sunday morning, he met the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Israel Julien Lerisson for a “preparatory meeting.”
The Red Cross has transferred hostages out of Gaza during previous rounds of hostage releases and will likely be called upon to do so again if the current US proposal is implemented.
Meeting with members of the right-wing Gvura Forum on Sunday, which represents families of soldiers killed in action in Gaza, Netanyahu said no other element of Trump’s plan will move ahead until every single hostage is released.
“Until the first clause — the release of all the hostages, living and dead — until the last of the hostages, all of them, are transferred to Israeli territory, we will not move on to any other clause,” Netanyahu pledged, according to Hebrew language media.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem with representatives from the ‘Gvura’ and ‘Tikva’ forums, August 20, 2024. (GPO)
If Hamas does not release the hostages “by the end of the time set by President Trump,” he said, Israel will go back on the offensive in Gaza “with the full backing of all the countries involved.”
“Trump’s pressure is increasing,” he told the group in the 40-minute meeting in Jerusalem. “Trump will not hesitate to wait longer than he has allotted. This time, he is determined.”
There was no official comment from his office on the reported remarks.
Rubio: Hamas has agreed
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that Hamas has “agreed to the president’s hostage release framework.”
Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Rubio said, “I’m not telling you here that these are people I trust 100% nor should we. But they have said basically that they agree to his proposal and the framework for releasing the hostages. That’s an enormous achievement. They’ve also agreed, in principle, in generality, to enter into this idea about what’s going to happen afterwards, the Palestinian technocrats, etcetera.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press as he departs Tel Aviv for Qatar following an official visit, at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Lod, Israel, September 16, 2025. (Nathan Howard / POOL / AFP)
“We will know very quickly whether Hamas is serious or not by how these technical talks go in terms of the logistics” of a potential hostage release, said Rubio.
Rubio said the US expects the hostage release to take place “as soon as possible.”
“But priority number one, the one that we think we can achieve something very quickly on hopefully, is the release of all of the hostages in exchange for Israel moving back to that yellow line, which is basically where they stood at the middle part of last month, or of August,” Rubio explained. “And that’s the one we’re focused on.”
On Sunday, Defense Minister Israel Katz echoed predictions that the hostages could be home in a matter of days, two years after they were taken captive in the October 7, 2023, attack that began the war.
“We may soon be informed of the return home of all our hostages, the living and the fallen alike, in accordance with the initiative of US President Donald Trump, at the end of which Hamas will be disarmed and the Gaza Strip will be demilitarized,” Katz said at a memorial ceremony for the Yom Kippur War. “We now expect the implementation of the first phase in the near future and the immediate release of all the hostages.”
A former Palestinian prisoner, released as part of the seventh hostage-prisoner exchange, is carried on a person’s shoulders upon arrival in Ramallah on February 27, 2025. (Zain Jaafar/AFP)
A senior Hamas official on Sunday said the Palestinian terror group is motivated to reach an agreement to end the war and exchange the hostages it is holding for Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli custody.
“Hamas is very keen to reach an agreement to end the war and immediately begin the prisoner exchange process in accordance with the field conditions,” said the Hamas official, who was speaking anonymously, as he was not authorized to speak on the matter.
He added, referring to Israel, “The occupation must not obstruct the implementation of President Trump’s plan. If the occupation has genuine intentions to reach an agreement, Hamas is ready.”
Seated at main table, L/R, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Indonesia’s President Prabowo Subianto, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US President Donald Trump, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly attend a multilateral meeting to discuss the situation in Gaza, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 23, 2025. (Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP)
On Sunday, the foreign ministers of Qatar, Jordan, the UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt put out a joint statement praising Hamas’s “readiness” to meet key demands in the Trump proposal, expressing their support for an eventual full IDF withdrawal from Gaza and the return of the Palestinian Authority to the territory.
The diplomats welcomed “the steps taken by Hamas regarding US President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the war in Gaza, release all hostages, alive or deceased, and the immediate launch of negotiations on implementation mechanisms.”
Whether a deal will be had quickly, however, remains to be seen. Conflicting reports have emerged this week over whether Hamas will agree to the plan’s clauses, which would entail the group releasing all 48 hostages, disarming, and ceding control of Gaza.
According to Trump’s plan, Israel is expected to release 250 Palestinian prisoners with life sentences and more than 1,700 detainees from the Gaza Strip who were arrested after October 7, 2023.
A Hamas source told the Saudi channel Al-Arabiya that Hamas operatives in Gaza have begun collecting the bodies of the dead hostages across the Strip, and that the organization demands that Israel halt its aerial strikes so that they are able to complete the task. Hamas later denied that it had begun gathering bodies.
The report also said that Hamas has received American guarantees requiring Israel not to resume the war and to withdraw IDF forces from the strip.
The sources also claimed that Hamas has agreed to hand over its weapons to a Palestinian–Egyptian body under international supervision — a claim that Hamas sources later denied.
The report was not confirmed by any other source.