Two Trump Statements About Israel Gaza War Fact Checked

Donald Trump made two major claims about the Israel–Gaza conflict in a press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday – but do they stand up to scrutiny?

The US president hosted the Israeli prime minister in Florida on Monday as American officials try to push both Israel and Hamas into the second phase of its Gaza peace plan.

The strategy, adopted in October, is now meant to turn the delicate ceasefire established in the first stage, into a sustainable settlement.

While supposedly encouraging Netanyahu to pull his troops back from Gaza, Trump also claimed there “will be hell to pay” for the Palestinian militants unless they full disarm – and soon.

The president also talked up the impact he’s had on the war and outlined a rough timeline – two claims which have been efficiently taken apart in the last day…

The US president claimed “just about” every Hamas hostage was released by his White House team – but that’s not true.

Trump told the press: “Every hostage just about that has been released was released because of me, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner – my whole team – Pete Hegseth – they were all released because of us.

“None were released because of the Biden administration. None. Then, we had a lack of releases with respect to the dead, and all of sudden they start coming. back.”

Joe Biden’s administration actually pushed Hamas to release 138 hostages via a series of deals.

Hamas also released many individuals sporadically during the first 10 months of the year, before Trump’s ceasefire deal came into place.

It has freed 20 living hostages and returned the bodies of 27 dead hostages since the US agreement was introduced in October.

Out of the 251 people taken captive on Israeli soil back on October 7, 2023, only the body of one – 24-year-old Ran Gvili who was killed during the Hamas attack – is yet to be sent home to his relatives.

Returning the remains of every hostage is a key part of the ceasefire deal.

Trump repeatedly insisted that Hamas and Israel need to move to the second phase “as quickly as we can” on Monday.

Speaking about Hamas, he said: “If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do, they agreed to it, and then there will be hell to pay for them. They have to disarm in a fairly short period of time.”

He also claimed the reconstruction of Gaza could “begin pretty soon”, although stopped short of offering a clear timeline.

But former UK National Security Adviser, Lord Ricketts, told the BBC that phase two of this plan is “nowhere near ready to being implemented”.

He warned the disarming of Hamas is just one part of the 20-point peace plan.

Other elements include the establishment of a Palestinian technocratic committee meant to run Gaza, an international stabilisation border force and a Trump-chaired Board of Peace.

“None of that seems to me to be at all ready,” Ricketts said.

“Hamas are not just going to disarm like that. The whole point of the 20-point plan is that Hamas would disarm gradually, with international monitoring, as an international force took over.

“For all Donald Trump’s optimism, I don’t think any of that is in place. The Arab nations are not queuing up to put their troops into Gaza, no one wants to be seen to be disarming Hamas at the say-so of the Israelis.

“Behind this performative friendship [between Trump and Netanyahu], not much has happened on stabilising the Gaza peace plan.”

He added that the Israelis “absolutely” don’t want to withdraw in the meantime, and so they are in a “kind of circular problem here”.