AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
President Trump is headed to the Middle East to mark the end of the war in Gaza. He'll arrive in Israel just as Hamas is expected to release its remaining hostages and as Israel releases Palestinian prisoners. It's an historic moment after two years of conflict, and it's just the beginning. Israel and Hamas still have a lot left to negotiate. We're going to get the latest from NPR's Daniel Estrin. He's in Tel Aviv. Good morning, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So can you give us a overview of what we should expect in the next few days?
ESTRIN: Yeah, Hamas has until noon local time on Monday to free 20 living hostages and free all the deceased hostages that they can find. They could be freed as early as today, but we're hearing more likely that it would be happening very early in the morning on Monday. And then Israel is expected to free Palestinian prisoners and detainees, nearly 2,000 of them. That will likely happen Monday late at night, just like we've seen in previous releases.
And also President Trump is arriving in Israel tomorrow just for a few short hours. He's going to be delivering a speech at Israel's parliament. He's going to be meeting the families of hostages, and then he flies to Egypt to Sharm El Sheikh for a short ceremony dubbed the Middle East peace ceremony. There will be major regional and international leaders there. Hamas and Israel are not attending.
RASCOE: U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner - they're both in Israel. Tell us about their visit.
ESTRIN: Well, they started by visiting Gaza. They were there to - what they said - to observe Israel's commitment to pulling back its troops. And as stipulated in the first part of this deal, Israel now is occupying only 50 - around 50% of Gaza. And then in the evening, Witkoff and Kushner addressed this enormous rally in Tel Aviv in what's known as Hostage Square, where families of hostages and their supporters have been rallying for nearly the entire duration of the war calling for an end of the war and a deal to release the hostages. And there's what it sounded like in the crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Thank you, Witkoff. Thank you, Trump. Thank you...
ESTRIN: They cheered, thank you, Witkoff, thank you, Trump. And then Steve Witkoff addressed the crowd.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
STEVE WITKOFF: I dreamed of this night. It's been a long journey.
ESTRIN: He called Trump the greatest president in U.S. history, and he praised the crowd. This is in stark contrast to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who never approved of these rallies, never addressed them, either. And listen to what happened when Witkoff thanked Netanyahu.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
WITKOFF: To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
(BOOING)
WITKOFF: Oh.
ESTRIN: So the crowd there booed for a solid minute as Witkoff struggled to get back to his speech. You know, many hostage families have blamed Netanyahu for prolonging the war, they say, to prolong his grip on power. And then the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner, spoke.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JARED KUSHNER: We're not going to celebrate tonight. We're going to celebrate on Monday when the Phase 1 gets into conclusion.
ESTRIN: Phase 1 getting into conclusion, and then that's where the hard work begins because Trump's plan calls for dismantling Hamas' weaponry in Gaza, and Israel's defense minister says that that's the next step. He says, Israel should destroy Hamas tunnels left in Gaza in an international effort led by the U.S.
RASCOE: And so we heard cheers for Trump, boos for Netanyahu. It sounds like the end of the war is, like, a moment of mixed emotions for Israel.
ESTRIN: It really is. We're going to be seeing reunions, very emotional reunions with hostages. They're gonna be helicoptered to hospitals. I visited one of them, the Rabin Medical Center, and I saw rooms ready to receive hostages with fancy body lotions, a teddy bear on a hospital bed. But there are also going to be funerals for the hostages who did not survive captivity. Around a third of the 28 dead hostages in Gaza are believed to be under rubble or their whereabouts are unclear. So there's going to be an international team tasked with trying to recover them.
And also in Gaza, I want to mention that aid trucks enter today from Egypt delivering badly needed supplies to a devastated Gaza, and people are beginning to return to areas that Israeli troops retreated from just in the last few days. Some people are finding their homes destroyed, so it's not a joyful homecoming. Our colleague, NPR's Anas Baba, returned to his home. He found it standing. It's in northern Gaza City. But it's very heavily damaged. And he recorded this video in Arabic.
ANAS BABA, BYLINE: (Speaking Arabic).
ESTRIN: So he says, the kitchen is gone. He's walking over a lot of debris. A missile pierced through the ceiling. It didn't explode. And one of the walls is completely blown out, and he jokes at the end there, oh, we have a balcony now that we didn't have. So this is a moment of mixed emotions in Gaza, as well.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Daniel.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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