U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.

i24 News – US President Donald Trump on Friday said the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas did not want to make a deal on a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.

“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal,” Trump said.

The comments followed statements by Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the effect that Israel was now considering “alternative” options to achieve its goals of bringing its hostages home from Gaza and ending the terror rule of Hamas in the coastal enclave.

Trump added he believed Hamas leaders would now be “hunted down.”

On Thursday, Witkoff said the Trump administration had decided to bring its negotiating team home for consultations following Hamas’s latest proposal. Witkoff said overnight that Hamas was to blame for the impasse, with Netanyahu concurring.

Trump also dismissed the significance of French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement that Paris would become the first major Western power to recognize an independent Palestinian state.

Macron’s comments, “didn’t carry any weight,” the US leader said.

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida, Feb. 26, 2022. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday that recognizing the State of Palestine before it is established could be counterproductive.

“I am very much in favor of the State of Palestine but I am not in favor of recognizing it prior to establishing it,” Meloni told Italian daily La Repubblica.

“If something that doesn’t exist is recognized on paper, the problem could appear to be solved when it isn’t,” Meloni added.

France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly in September drew condemnation from Israel and the United States, amid the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

On Friday, Italy’s foreign minister said recognition of a Palestinian state must occur simultaneously with recognition of Israel by the new Palestinian entity.

A German government spokesperson said on Friday that Berlin was not planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the short term and said its priority now is to make “long-overdue progress” towards a two-state solution.

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A drone view shows the remains of a destroyed tank, following deadly clashes between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces, in Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria July 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi/File Photo

Syrian and Israeli officials agreed to meet again after no final accord was reached in US-mediated talks in Paris on de-escalating the conflict in southern Syria, state-run Ekhbariya TV reported on Saturday, citing a diplomatic source.

The source described the dialogue as “honest and responsible,” in the first confirmation from the Syrian side that talks had taken place.

On Friday, US envoy Tom Barrack said officials from both countries spoke about de-escalating the situation in Syria during the talks on Thursday.

Representatives from the Syrian foreign ministry and intelligence officials were in attendance, Syria’s Ekhbariya reported.

Hundreds of people have been reported killed in clashes in the southern Syrian province of Sweida between Druze fighters, Sunni Bedouin tribes and government forces. Israel intervened with airstrikes to prevent what it said was mass killings of Druze by government forces.

Last week’s clashes underlined the challenges interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa faces in stabilizing Syria and maintaining centralized rule, despite warming ties with the US and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.

The diplomatic source said the meeting involved initial consultations aimed at “reducing tensions and opening channels of communication amid an ongoing escalation since early December.”

The Syrian side held Israel responsible for the latest escalation, saying that the continuation of such “hostile policies” was threatening the region, according to the source. The Syrian delegation also said that Damascus would not accept “imposing new realities on the ground.”

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