Watch live: Vance speaks in Israel as he seeks to shore up fragile Gaza ceasefire

Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters Tuesday as he and President Trump’s negotiating team are in Israel, trying to Strengthen the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and US special envoy Steve Witkoff are there as part of the team.

Before Vance left for Israel, he said that obstacles in the path to peace They were expected.

“There will be ups and downs,” Vance told reporters. “Hamas is going to shoot at Israel, Israel will have to respond, of course.”

Hamas has denied responsibility for an alleged RPG attack that killed two Israeli soldiers over the weekend. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that this was a Hamas attack and that the Israeli military responded to the alleged ceasefire violation by dropping nearly 169 tons of bombs on Gaza.

“One of our hands holds a gun, the other is extended toward peace,” Netanyahu told lawmakers on Monday. “Peace is made with the strong, not with the weak. Today Israel is stronger than ever.”

The Israeli strikes killed at least 45 Palestinians, according to health officials in the Hamas-ruled territory.

President Trump warned Hamas on Monday not to renege on the deal that took months to negotiate.

“They will behave, they will be nice,” he said. “And if not, we will eradicate them if necessary.”

Kushner and Witkoff He met with Netanyahu on Monday and the Israeli leader’s office said Vance would also meet with him this week. Vice President and Second Lady Usha Vance were greeted upon their arrival Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter and Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

Vance was scheduled to have a working lunch with Witkoff and Kushner on Tuesday before his meeting with Netanyahu.

The peace process has taken incremental steps despite the weekend violence, with Israel returning the remains of 15 Palestinians to Gaza on Tuesday after Hamas handed over the body of another deceased hostage on Monday night. As part of the peace deal, a total of 165 Palestinian bodies have been returned to Gaza, many of them former detainees, while Hamas has released the 20 living Israeli hostages, along with remains of 13 deceased captives.

But despite those measures, the long-term viability of Trump’s peace plan, which he says will end nearly eight decades of fighting between Israel and the Palestinians, remains less certain.

Former Israeli official casts doubt on prospects of Trump peace plan

Some Israelis remain skeptical that the Israeli prime minister is really interested in lasting peace. Among them is Netanyahu’s fierce critic Alon Pinkas, who served as an adviser to four Israeli foreign ministers.

He told News themezone that Netanyahu signed the Trump-brokered peace deal, but never really endorsed its primary purpose, or Trump’s stated goal of securing lasting peace in the heart of the Middle East.

“This was a deal he was forced to agree to,” Pinkas said. “This is a deal he signed under pressure and now he is developing a new plan to manipulate Trump.”

Pinkas credited Mr. Trump for making “something his predecessors were unwilling or hesitant to do, and that is to put real pressure” on Israel’s leader.

“It worked, but it only worked during the first phase,” Pinkas said, referring to the release of the live Israeli hostages and the ceasefire coming into force.

He said after the weekend violence that the agreement had been “apparently restored, but when Netanyahu says, ‘I’m restoring the ceasefire,’ it’s only because there is a visit here from the vice president, JD Vance, and because the United States sent its envoy.”

Pinkas said he was confident that Israeli forces would resume operations in Gaza within days, noting that they remained deployed in about half of the Palestinian territory.

“The hostages are no longer in danger because they were freed, and Hamas was not decisively destroyed, as Mr. Netanyahu promised and boasted and boasted for two years, so I see a serious incentive for Mr. Netanyahu to resume” an offensive against Hamas, Pinkas told News themezone. “Maybe not on a large scale, given the agreement, but I do see… a local skirmish turning into a broader flare-up, which then deteriorates or escalates into a full-on Israeli military operation.”

Hamas’s chief negotiator said Tuesday that the group remained committed to the ceasefire agreement. But President Trump’s peace plan calls for the demilitarization of Gaza, and many analysts, including Pinkas, have doubts that Hamas is willing to hand over all its weapons.

“That’s probably the biggest flaw in the deal,” Pinkas said. “The agreement itself is a good agreement, but for an agreement like that to work, it requires good faith, goodwill and trust. None of these ingredients exist. In fact, both sides have a vested interest in not moving beyond the ceasefire.”

“Hamas wants to draw Israel inward [Gaza] to a de facto occupation, mount an insurgency and show the Palestinians that they are the true resistance. And Netanyahu wants in because he knows that if everything stops now and there is progress towards the next phases, that almost inevitably means that he will be considered the guy who failed to defeat Hamas.”

Pinkas said that while the last two years of war have left Hamas militarily defeated and degraded, “Hamas is not over. Hamas is there, and you see those photos every day. The samples on News: Hamas gangs walking around in combat uniforms and armed. That’s not going to be enough politically for Mr. Netanyahu.”

Speaking at a recent interview with Tony Dokoupil of News themezoneNetanyahu said his government had agreed to “give peace a chance,” but noted that the conditions of Trump’s 20-point peace plan “are very clear: It’s not just that we take out the hostages without taking out our army, but that we will subsequently have both demilitarization and disarmament. They are not the same thing. First, Hamas has to hand over its weapons. And second, we have to make sure that there are no weapons factories inside Gaza. “There is no arms smuggling into Gaza.”

“We also agreed: OK, let’s finish the first part. Now let’s give the opportunity to do the second part peacefully, which is my hope,” the Israeli leader told News themezone.

In:

• War
• Hamas
• Israel
• Cease-fire
• donald trump
• Loop
• Palestinians
• Middle East
• Benjamin Netanyahu