Middle East crisis live: Trump says Gaza ceasefire should be cancelled if hostage release delayed | Donald Trump

If you are just tuning into president Trump’s latest comments on Gaza, the US leader has suggested that a precarious ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas should be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza by midday on Saturday.

This is what he said exactly:

“If they’re not here, all hell is going to break out,” Trump said. He added of the ceasefire: “Cancel it, and all bets are off.”

Trump said the final decision would be up to Israel, saying, “I’m speaking for myself. Israel can override it.” But asked if the US would join in a response to Hamas if hostages weren’t freed, Trump added, “Hamas will find out what I mean.”

One of the reasons Hamas says it is postponing the next scheduled release of Israeli hostages is what they say are violations of the ceasefire deal, including delaying the return of displaced Palestinians to the north.

Egypt rejected on Monday “any compromise” that would infringe on Palestinians’ rights, in a statement issued after foreign minister Badr Abdelatty met with his US counterpart in Washington.

“Egypt maintains its position rejecting any compromise of these rights, including the right to self-determination, remaining on the land and independence,” said the Egyptian foreign ministry, after US President Donald Trump had suggested removing Palestinians from the war-battered Gaza Strip.

Hamas said on Monday that the next Gaza hostage-prisoner exchange may still take place as scheduled under the truce deal with Israel, after the group’s armed wing had announced an indefinite postponement, according to Agence France-Presse.

The Palestinian militant group said that “Hamas has intentionally made this announcement five days before the scheduled prisoner handover, allowing mediators ample time to pressure the (Israeli) occupation towards fulfilling its obligations.”

“The door remains open for the prisoner exchange batch to proceed as planned, once the occupation complies.”

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of events in the Middle East.

The latest development is that US President Donald Trump has said that if all the hostages held in Gaza are not returned by Saturday at noon he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and letting “all hell break loose.”

Trump also said, however, “I’m speaking for myself. Israel can override it.”

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza.

It comes after Hamas said it was delaying the release of Israeli hostages indefinitely over “violations” of the ceasefire deal, prompting Israel’s defence minister to put the country’s military on alert with orders to prepare for “any scenario in Gaza”.

Mediators fear a breakdown of the three-week-old ceasefire, Egyptian security sources told Reuters, and have postponed talks until they receive a clear indication of Washington’s intent to continue with the phased deal.

Also today:

• Donald Trump said his plan to “take over Gaza” would not include a right of return for the more than 2 million Palestinians that he has said have “no alternative” but to leave because of the destruction left by Israel’s military campaign. Trump continued to endorse a plan for the Palestinians to be resettled in Egypt and Jordan, a plan that both countries have rejected. The remarks are the latest effective endorsement of ethnic cleansing by the US president.

• Hamas’s announcement prompted Israel’s defence minister to put the country’s military on alert with orders to prepare for “any scenario in Gaza”. Israel’s security cabinet has moved forward a meeting to discuss negotiations on second phase, which had been set for Tuesday evening. The army has cancelled all leave for soldiers in the Gaza division, the Kan news outlet reported, in a sign that Israeli authorities are preparing for the resumption of war.

• Mediators fear a breakdown of the three-week-old ceasefire and have postponed talks until they receive a clear indication of Washington’s intent to continue with the phased deal, according to reports. Qatar had reportedly warned Israeli officials at the weekend that even the first stage of the ceasefire deal was being put in jeopardy by provocative statements from Benjamin Netanyahu and by his government’s approach to talks on a second stage.

• Israeli police raided a leading Palestinian-owned bookshop in Jerusalem and detained two of its owners, accusing them of selling books that supported terrorism, including a children’s colouring book entitled From the Jordan to the Sea.

• Karim Khan, the international criminal court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, is the person to be hit with economic and travel sanctions authorised by Trump that target the court over investigations of US citizens or US allies, the White House has confirmed. The US president signed an executive order last week authorising aggressive economic sanctions against the ICC, accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.

• A former UK supreme court judge described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “grossly disproportionate” and said there was “at least an arguable case” that it was genocidal. Lord Sumption, who served on the UK’s highest court from 2012 to 2018, was one of the highest profile signatories of a letter last year warning that the UK government was breaching international law by arming Israel.