“Getting them is a complicated process. I’d rather not tell you what they have to do to get them,” Trump said Thursday of the coming hostage exchange. “There are places you don’t want to be, but we are getting the hostages back on Tuesday, Monday or Tuesday, and that’ll be a day of joy.”<\/p>\n

Regarding the hostage exchange, Trump — who declined to provide his position on a two-state solution or more details concerning secondary stages of the peace deal, including plans for people in Gaza and security guarantees — was asked whether there would be any consequences if Hamas could not return all of the bodies of the deceased hostages.<\/p>\n

“We know where most of them are actually,” he said of the living hostages. “The bodies are a bigger problem because some of the bodies are going to be a little bit hard to find. It’s [a] terrible thing to discuss, even, but you understand, we’re all, we’re all people, we’re grown-ups. We understand life &hellip<\/a>; We’re going to do the best we can.”<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters he planned to attend an “official” signing ceremony for the deal in Egypt, which Arab countries, including Qatar<\/a>, Saudi Arabia<\/a>, and the United Arab Emirates<\/a>, would attend.<\/p>\n

“They’ve all come together, something which is amazing actually,” he said. “They’ve all come together for this, and they’re really probably the best relationships they’ve ever had. So it’s been really something incredible.”<\/p>\n

Trump also previewed the possibility of speaking at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, but did not answer a question of whether he would visit Gaza as well.<\/p>\n

“[IsraeliPrimeMinister[IsraeliPrimeMinister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>]asked me to speak at the Knesset,” he said. “I’ve agreed to, if they, if they would like me to, I will do it. It’s the first time a president has ever done that. So that makes it very interesting, right?” Former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush addressed the Knesset<\/a> in 1979, 1994, and 2008, respectively.<\/p>\n

In addition, Trump downplayed the prospect of Netanyahu being deposed over his response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and the war.<\/p>\n

“I think he’s very popular right now. He’s much more popular today than he was five days ago right now,” he said. “Maybe people should have run against him five days ago. It might not have been a bad idea. Now, Bibi [a nickname for Netanyahu] has become, this has been a very good thing.”<\/p>\n

Throughout the meeting, Trump heaped praise on members of his negotiating team, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a>, War Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a>, Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff,<\/a> and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner<\/a>, who does not hold a government position and only joined the team for this final round of negotiations.<\/p>\n

“Jared is a very smart guy. He did the Abraham Accords,” Trump told the Washington Examiner<\/em> when asked why Kushner had joined this round of talks. “He’s a very smart person, and he knows the region, knows the people, knows a lot of the players.”<\/p>\n

“We had a very smart group of people. These are high-IQ people, OK? You know, I talk about how many low-IQ people we have in our government,” the president said. “We’ve got some real low ones, some shockingly low — but these are very high-IQ people, and that’s what we want. I like high-IQ people.”<\/p>\n

TRUMP ‘ISN’T HOLDING HIS BREATH’ OVER THIS YEAR’S NOBEL PEACE PRIZE<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Furthermore, Trump even suggested that the deal was bringing Iran<\/a> back to the negotiating table, despite the recent U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and crippling sanctions the United States maintains against the regime in Tehran.<\/p>\n

“Iran wants to work on peace. Now they’ve informed us, and they’ve acknowledged that they are totally in favor of this deal. They think it’s a great thing, so we appreciate that, and we’ll work with Iran,” he said. “As you know, we have major sanctions on Iran, and lots of other things. We would like to see them be able to rebuild their country, too, but they can’t have a nuclear weapon.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n