Israel and Hamas are set to begin mediated negotiations on Monday aimed at ending a two-year conflict that’s devastated Gaza and destabilized the Middle East, after U.S. President Donald Trump hailed the militant group’s offer to release all hostages.

Egypt, a key intermediary in truce talks, said it would host delegations from both sides to discuss a possible exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were also traveling to Egypt to take part in the negotiations, which follow Hamas’ request to discuss some elements of the U.S. president’s 20-point plan to end the war. An Israeli official said the military had assumed a defensive posture in Gaza City, while Hamas said airstrikes and shelling continued in the enclave’s de facto capital, killing dozens of people.

Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend to celebrate Hamas’ offer, Axios reported Sunday, but the Israeli prime minister complained the offer was meaningless. Trump, according to the report, snapped at Netanyahu for being “negative,” and added, “This is a win. Take it.”

A day earlier, Trump posted on social media that if the hostages are released, “We will create the conditions for the next phase of withdrawal, which will bring us close to the end of this 3,000 YEAR CATASTROPHE.”

The Israeli delegation in Egypt will include Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, while Israel’s Kan News reported Ghazi Hamad, Osama Hamdan and Muhamed Darwish will represent Hamas. The discussions will focus on the final arrangements regarding the timing of the hostage releases and the list of Palestinian prisoners to be freed, according to Kan.

“We are the closest we have been in a very long time,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Fox News Sunday.

But he added the hostage release and prisoner exchange was just the first — and perhaps easiest — step. Rebuilding Gaza and determining who will govern the region will be harder, he said.

“That’s the part that I think is going to be a little tougher to work through, but that’s what’s going to provide permanency to the end of the conflict. So we’re focused on those two phases,” Rubio said on ABC’s "This Week."

Netanyahu said Israel’s military will redeploy within the territory. He also left open the option of disarming Hamas by force.

A swap of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners would happen immediately upon securing an agreement, while Hamas’ disarmament would come in a second stage, Netanyahu said.

“I hope that in the coming days, during the Sukkot holiday, we can announce the return of all of our hostages, alive and dead, in one single release,” Netanyahu said on Israeli television on Saturday. Sukkot starts Monday evening and lasts a week.

Details on what Trump’s plan would entail remain scarce. His latest comment shifts the onus back to Hamas after the group released its statement late Friday, prompting Trump to urge Israel to “immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!”

“I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” Trump said in a social media post after Hamas responded to his administration’s plan announced on Monday.

Israeli assets have jumped on the prospect of an end to the war in Gaza. The shekel was the best-performing of a basket of about 30 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg last week, rising 1.9% against the dollar to its strongest level since 2022.

Trump’s call for an immediate ceasefire may prove tricky for Netanyahu politically, given that some of his far-right cabinet members will be wary about further talks with Hamas. The group — designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., European Union and others — didn’t agree to some key stipulations in Trump’s plan, including that it disarm and have nothing to do with postwar governance in Gaza.

Iran-backed Hamas triggered the war by attacking Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and abducting another 250. Of those, 48 remain in Gaza and Israel says it believes around 20 are still alive. Israel has lost more than 450 soldiers in Gaza combat since.

More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory. Israel’s war sparked a famine in parts of the enclave, according to a U.N.-backed body, and led another U.N.-backed panel to declare it a genocide.

Hamas said the handover of hostages would be “contingent upon the necessary field conditions for carrying out the exchange.”

“We will enter into negotiations over all matters related” to the U.S. plan, senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk told Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV on Saturday, when asked if the group was ready to disarm and accept the exile of its leaders and fighters. “The movement has already said that on the day that a sovereign Palestinian state is created it won’t be an armed movement and it will hand over its weapons to this state.”

Israel has strenuously said it won’t allow an independent Palestine, arguing it would pose a security threat to the Jewish state.

Abu Marzouk said much of Trump’s plan — mainly clauses about the future governance of Gaza — needed to be addressed with other Palestinian factions too.

“It may take months” to finalize everything, he said.

For Trump, a truce in the coming days and the freeing of the hostages could boost his campaign to win the Nobel Peace Prize, with the next winner being announced on Oct. 10. Bloomberg has reported that the president’s public and behind-closed-doors push to get the award has intensified in recent days.

In its response Friday, Hamas said parts of Trump’s plan “require a unified national stance and must be addressed based on relevant international laws and resolutions.”

There was also no mention of a proposal for a “Board of Peace” — headed by Trump and involving other world leaders, including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair — to oversee and supervise a transitional, technocratic governance committee made up of Palestinians.

Arab nations had put strong pressure on Hamas to agree to Trump’s proposal. Egypt and Qatar both voiced approval of the Hamas statement, with Qatar, which has served as a mediator in previous rounds of talks, saying Trump’s push could lead to “rapid results that would put an end to the bloodshed of Palestinians.”

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(With assistance from Sam Dagher, Fares Akram, Fiona MacDonald, Catherine Lucey, María Paula Mijares Torres and Onur Ant.)

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