Vance seeks to bolster fragile Gaza ceasefire on trip to Israel

TEL AVIV - Vice President JD Vance projected cautious optimism about the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plans in Israel on Tuesday, downplaying a weekend of violence that threatened the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Vance’s arrival in Israel, just a week after President Donald Trump visited, underscored the tenuousness of the ceasefire while showcasing how much external intervention will be required to keep it on track before the start of negotiations for the thornier second phase of the agreement, which aims for a permanent end to the war.

Israel and Hamas have each accused the other of violating the ceasefire amid reports of Israeli troops firing on Palestinians on a daily basis, and there remain significant disputes over the return of deceased Israeli hostages from Gaza.

Vance largely sidestepped addressing those disputes Tuesday, declining to issue a deadline for Hamas to disarm or return the bodies of the hostages. He also said the situation was evolving “better than I expected,” just days after the Israeli military killed dozens of people in Gaza in strikes that it said were a response to a Hamas attack in which two Israeli soldiers were killed.

“It is in fact exactly how this is going to have to happen when you have people who hate each other, who have been fighting against each other for a very long time,” Vance said at a news conference, where he was joined by Steve Witkoff, the U.S. Middle East envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. “We are doing very well.”

Trump has touted the Middle East deal as a transformational foreign policy achievement, claiming last week that the ceasefire marked the “historic dawn of a new Middle East.” Vance, Witkoff and Kushner called for patience Tuesday, describing the many moving parts of the peace initiative — including the establishment of an international peacekeeping force and the rebuilding of Gaza — as works in progress.

In Israel, Vance’s visit has been viewed as a signal from Washington to all parties that it is running the show and will ensure the deal gets to the next stage, according to Gayil Talshir, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It is also seen as a means to supervise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and make sure he doesn’t return to fighting in Gaza, she added, describing it as a “sign of Israel’s weakness vis-à-vis Trump.”

In meetings Monday, Witkoff told Netanyahu that Israel’s responses to any ceasefire breaches should be proportionate to the violations and that the next 30 days are crucial for the deal to hold and for talks to enter the second phase, according to a person familiar with the details of the visit who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. Israel is also pressuring the Trump administration to ensure that Hamas is disarmed before negotiations over Gaza’s reconstruction, the person said.

Kushner told reporters Tuesday that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls” but that one of the options being considered was rebuilding in parts of Gaza controlled by Israel, “in order to give Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live.”

Senior administration advisers last week described part of that initiative as selecting areas behind current Israeli lines, particularly around Rafah in the south, where secure “transition” housing could be constructed. Several earlier postwar plans that U.S. and Israeli coordinators are drawing from called for building temporary housing for Palestinians during the years-long reconstruction efforts.

“It’s a West Berlin view of Gaza: The idea is to see whether it’s possible, in the Hamas-free areas, you could build a more hopeful Gaza,” said David Makovsky, a fellow at the Washington Institute. “If [Hamas rejects] disarmament, then build on the other side and show Gazans that Hamas is not there, and they can have a better life.”

As the U.S. pushed Netanyahu’s government to advance the ceasefire deal, Arab mediators pressured Hamas to step up efforts to locate the remaining bodies of deceased hostages. Before Tuesday, the group and allied militants had handed over the remains of 13 hostages, out of 28. Last week, they released 20 living hostages, all of whom were abducted when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Hamas handed over the bodies of two more deceased hostages Tuesday.

“We are serious about retrieving all the bodies, as has been agreed upon in the agreement, and we don’t have any desire or ambition to keep any of them,” said Khalil al-Hayya, the lead negotiator for Hamas, in an interview that aired late Monday on Egyptian state television.

Hamas has said throughout the negotiations that it would take time and equipment to find the bodies, which were buried or trapped under rubble in various places across Gaza. Israel has accused the group of holding the bodies back.

On Tuesday, Vance also hailed what he said were streams of humanitarian aid now entering Gaza, a process that has been touch-and-go as violence has broken out.

Food distribution by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the controversial U.S.- and Israeli-backed organization, has been indefinitely paused, according to people familiar with GHF operations who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. One person said that three GHF sites in southern Gaza — all behind Israeli lines — were still open for medical care and that hundreds of trucks loaded with food were awaiting any decision to resume operations. Contracts for armed U.S. security agents operating the sites expire in November.