US President Donald Trump replies to a question in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect

US President Donald Trump said he was close to forging a deal to end the war in Gaza and bring hostages home as he prepared to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday.

“It’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza. I think it’s a deal that gets the hostages back, it’s going to be a deal that ends the war,” Trump told reporters on Friday before leaving the White House to attend the Ryder Cup golf tournament in New York.

He offered no details and gave no timetable.

A senior White House official told Reuters that Trump will meet Netanyahu on Monday at the White House with the aim of reaching a framework for a deal. Netanyahu spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.

While international leaders gathered at the United Nations in New York this week, the US unveiled a 21-point Middle East peace plan to end the nearly two-year-long war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

The proposal was circulated on Tuesday to officials from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan, according to US special envoy Steve Witkoff.

A White House official said the US plan calls for the return of all hostages, living and dead, no further Israeli attacks on Qatar, and a new dialogue between Israel and Palestinians for “peaceful coexistence.”

Israel angered Qataris by launching an airstrike against Hamas targets in their capital Doha on Sept. 9.

Trump, Israel’s staunchest ally on the global stage, said he spoke on Thursday with representatives from several Middle Eastern nations as well as Netanyahu.

The Gaza war began when Hamas stormed into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. About 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed to be alive, are still being held.

Israel launched a military campaign in response aimed at freeing the hostages and destroying Hamas in neighboring Gaza.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah Chief Naim Qassem gives a televised speech from an unknown location, July 30, 2025, in this screen grab from video. Photo: Al Manar TV/REUTERS TV/via REUTERS

Hezbollah‘s effort to blunt international pressure on Lebanon to disarm the terrorist group by appealing to Saudi Arabia last week was the result of back-channel diplomacy by Iran, two Iranian sources and a source with knowledge of Hezbollah thinking said.

Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem appealed to Saudi Arabia to turn “a new page” and set aside past disputes to create a unified front against Israel in a speech last week, a move widely seen as signaling the Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim group’s alarm at the push to make Lebanon implement a plan for disarming it.

Iran‘s involvement, which has not previously been reported, also indicates Tehran’s anxiety that its main Lebanese ally will lose more ground after suffering major reverses during last year’s war with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power that has long regarded Hezbollah as a terrorist organization that exercises undue influence over Lebanon on Iran‘s behalf, has consistently backed disarmament and has shown no signs of changing course since Qassem’s appeal.

Saudi officials did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on Hezbollah‘s appeal to the kingdom or whether Riyadh’s policy on the group’s possession of weapons has changed.

The issue of Hezbollah’s weapons is bitterly divisive in Lebanon and has grown increasingly urgent as the United States presses Beirut to announce a plan to disarm the group and as Israel continues air strikes in the country.

IRANIAN INTERVENTION

Iran‘s outreach to the Saudis came via Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who visited Riyadh recently, according to the two Iranian sources and the source with knowledge of Hezbollah thinking.

The source familiar with Hezbollah thinking said the group believed the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Saudi Arabia‘s Gulf ally Qatar this month may have changed the situation sufficiently to erase old enmities.

However, the source added that the group had only made its appeal to Saudi Arabia after a signal from the Iranians, saying Larijani had urged Qassem to show goodwill to the kingdom.

One of the Iranian sources said the subject of Hezbollah‘s weapons was one of the main topics of discussion during Larijani’s trip to Riyadh. The other Iranian source said Larijani had told Saudi Arabia that neither Lebanon nor the wider region would benefit from disarming Hezbollah.

Former arch regional foes Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on a rapprochement in 2023 after years of competition that aggravated conflicts and political disputes in several Arab countries.

However, Saudi Arabia remains wary of Iranian influence in Arab states.

Saudi analyst Abdulaziz Sager, head of the Gulf Research Center, said the kingdom’s policy was based on the state having an exclusive right to possess arms and control foreign policy decisions – a stance that meant there was no room for an understanding with Hezbollah.

“The Saudi–Iranian agreement did not change the basis of Saudi demands rejecting Iranian sponsorship of armed sectarian ideological militias linked to Iran‘s expansionist and interventionist regional strategy,” Sager said.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa meets US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel, on the sidelines of the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York City, US, Sept. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan/Pool

Efforts to reach a security pact between Syria and Israel have hit a last-minute snag over Israel‘s demand that it be allowed to open a “humanitarian corridor” to Syria‘s southern province of Sweida, four sources familiar with the talks said.

Syria and Israel had come close in recent weeks to agreeing the broad outlines of a pact after months of US-brokered talks in Baku, Paris, and London that accelerated in the lead-up to the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week.

The pact was intended to create a demilitarized zone that would include the province of Sweida, where sectarian violence in July killed hundreds of people from the Druze, an offshoot of Islam.

ISRAEL SAYS IT WILL PROTECT SYRIA‘S DRUZE

Israel, which has a 120,000-strong Druze minority whose men serve in the Israeli military, has said it will protect the sect and carried out military strikes in Syria under the banner of defending it.

In earlier talks in Paris, Israel asked to open a land corridor to Sweida for aid, but Syria rejected the request as a breach of its sovereignty.

Israel reintroduced the demand at a late stage in the talks, according to two Israeli officials, a Syrian source and a source in Washington briefed on the talks.

The Syrian source and the source in Washington said the renewed Israeli demand had derailed plans to announce a deal this week. The new sticking point has not been previously reported.

The State Department, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Syria‘s foreign ministry did not respond to questions on the contours of the deal or the sticking points.

NO TALKS SINCE LAST WEEK

US envoy Tom Barrack, who has been brokering the talks between Syria and Israel, said on Tuesday the longtime foes were close to striking a “de-escalation agreement” in which Israel would stop its attacks and Syria would agree not to move any machinery or heavy equipment near the border with Israel.

He said it would serve as the first step towards the security deal that the two countries have been negotiating. One diplomat familiar with the matter said it appeared that the US was “scaling down from a security deal to a de-escalation deal.”

Speaking shortly before Barrack at an event in New York, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda leader who led rebel forces that seized Damascus last year, expressed concern that Israel may be stalling the talks.

“We are scared of Israel. We are worried about Israel. It’s not the other way around,” he said.

A Syrian official told Reuters that conversations before the UN General Assembly began were “positive,” but there had been no further conversations with Israeli officials this week.

Addressing the UN General Assembly on Friday, Netanyahu said he believed an agreement could be reached with Syria that would respect its sovereignty and protect both Israel and the security of minorities in the region.

His office said on Wednesday that concluding ongoing negotiations was “contingent on ensuring the interests of Israel, which include, inter alia, the demilitarization of south-western Syria and preserving the safety and security of the Druze in Syria.”

Syria and Israel have been foes since Israel‘s founding in 1948. A disengagement agreement in 1974 created a narrow demilitarized zone monitored by the United Nations.

But since rebels toppled Syria‘s then-leader Bashar al-Assad last Dec. 8, Israel has carried out unprecedented strikes on Syria‘s military assets across the country and sent troops into the country’s south.

Israel has expressed open hostility towards Sharaa, citing his former links to al Qaeda, and has lobbied the United States to keep Syria weak and decentralized.

In months of talks, Syria had been advocating for a return to the 1974 disengagement agreement. In mid-September, Sharaa described the deal to journalists as a “necessity.” He said then that Israel would need to respect Syria‘s airspace and territorial unity but raised the possibility of Israeli breaches.

“We could reach a deal at any moment, but then another problem arises which is: will Israel commit to and implement it? We will see this in the next phase,” he said.