US President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed that the two-year Gaza war has “ended”, assuring that the hostages would be released on “Monday or Tuesday” as a part of the first phase of a newly signed Gaza ceasefire deal.“Last night, we reached a momentous breakthrough in the Middle East, something that people said was never going to be done. We ended the war in Gaza, and I think it’s going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, an everlasting peace. We secured the release of all of the remaining hostages, and they should be released on Monday or Tuesday. Getting them is a complicated process,” he said.“I’m going to try and make a trip over. We’re going to try and get over there. We’re working on the timing, the exact timing. We’re going to go to Egypt, where we’ll have a signing, an additional signing. We’ve already had a signing representing me, but we’re going to have an official signing,” he added.The statement comes a day before Nobel Peace Prize announcement as the US president has been pressing for one for having ended “seven”, and now “eight wars.”Meanwhile, a senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan said that the militant group rejected Trump’s proposal for an interim “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza’s administration, headed by the US president himself.“No Palestinian would accept this. All the factions, including the Palestinian Authority, reject this,” Hamdan told Al Araby Television Network. Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement to release hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody, following indirect talks in Egypt. The negotiations were guided by Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which proposes disarming Hamas and placing post-war Gaza under a transitional authority led by a board chaired by Trump.
