Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday the ceasefire in Gaza would end and the military would resume fighting Hamas until it was defeated if the Palestinian militant group did not release hostages by midday Saturday, Reuters reported.

Following Netanyahu’s ultimatum, Hamas issued a statement renewing its commitment to the ceasefire and accusing Israel of jeopardizing the ceasefire.

The Israeli announcement came after Netanyahu met with several key ministers, including defence, foreign affairs and national security, who he said gave the ultimatum their full support.

After nearly 16 months of war, Hamas has gradually been releasing hostages since the first phase of a ceasefire began on January 19, but on Monday said it would not free any more until further notice over accusations Israel was violating the deal.

“If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon – the ceasefire will end and the IDF (military) will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated,” Netanyahu said.

It was not immediately clear if Netanyahu meant Hamas should release all hostages held in Gaza or just the three who had been expected to be released on Saturday under the ceasefire.

His office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking comment on the prime minister’s remarks.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a close ally of Israel, has said that Hamas should release all of the hostages by Saturday, read the report.

The prime minister also said he had ordered the military to gather forces inside and around Gaza, with the military announcing shortly after it was deploying additional forces to Israel’s south including the mobilization of reservists.

A Hamas official earlier said that Israeli hostages could only be brought home if the ceasefire was respected, dismissing the “language of threats” after Trump said he would “let hell break out” if they were not freed.

“Trump must remember there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring back the (Israeli) prisoners,” senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

Hamas has said Israel has violated the ceasefire with several deadly shootings as well as by holding up some aid deliveries and impeding the return of Gazans to the strip’s north.

Israel denies holding back aid and says it has fired on people who disregarded warnings not to approach Israeli troops.

So far, 16 of 33 hostages have been freed as part of the ceasefire deal’s first phase due to last 42 days. Five Thai hostages were also let go in an unscheduled release.

In exchange, Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including prisoners serving life sentences for deadly attacks and others detained during the war and held without charge, Reuters reported.

An Israeli group representing families of hostages urged Netanyahu to stick to the ceasefire agreement.

“We must not go backwards. We cannot allow the hostages to waste away in captivity,” the hostages forum said.

There are 76 hostages still held in Gaza, more than 35 of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli media.

Gaza, one of the world’s most densely populated areas, has been devastated by Israel’s military offensive. The enclave is short of food, water and shelter, and in need of billions of dollars in foreign aid.

More than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, the Gaza health ministry says, and nearly all of Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million has been internally displaced by the conflict, read the report.

Some 1,200 people were killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israeli communities and about 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Trump said last week the U.S. should take over Gaza and move out more than 2 million Palestinian residents so the enclave can be developed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Netanyahu praised the plan and said on Tuesday the security cabinet endorsed it.

Trump’s plan has enraged Palestinians and Arab leaders and upended decades of U.S. policy that endorsed a two-state solution in which Israel and a Palestinian state would coexist.

The forcible displacement of a population under military occupation is a war crime banned by the 1949 Geneva conventions.

Trump restated his position as he met Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday at the White House amid widespread opposition to his plan among Washington’s Arab allies, including Jordan.

Trump said on Tuesday that he believed there would be a parcel of land in Jordan, Egypt and someplace else where Palestinians can be resettled.

Egypt rejected any proposal to allocate land to Gaza residents, the state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV reported on Tuesday, citing Egyptian sources.

North Korean state media on Wednesday denounced Trump’s Gaza proposal and accused Washington of extortion.

“The world is now boiling like a porridge pot over the U.S.’ bombshell declaration,” KCNA said.

Palestinians fear a repeat of what they call the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s creation. Israel denies they were forced out, Reuters reported.

For Jordan, Trump’s talk of resettlement comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank, echoing an idea long promoted by ultra-nationalist Israelis of Jordan becoming an alternative Palestinian home.

Gazans interviewed by Reuters criticised Trump for saying he would be prepared for “hell” to break out if all the Israeli hostages were not released by noon on Saturday.

“Hell worse than what we have already? Hell worse than killing? The destruction, all the practices and human crimes that have occurred in the Gaza Strip have not happened anywhere else in the world,” said Jomaa Abu Kosh, a Palestinian from Rafah in southern Gaza, standing beside demolished homes.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that Hamas should release all hostages held by the militant group in Gaza by midday Saturday or he would propose canceling the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and “let hell break out.”

Trump cautioned that Israel might want to override him on the issue and said he might speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reported.

But in a wide-ranging session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump expressed frustration with the condition of the last group of hostages freed by Hamas and by the announcement by the militant group that it would halt further releases.

“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock, I think it’s an appropriate time. I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday,” Trump said.

He said he wanted the hostages released en masse, instead of a few at a time. “We want ’em all back.”

Trump also said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they don’t take Palestinian refugees being relocated from Gaza. He is to meet Jordan’s King Abdullah on Tuesday.

The comments came on a day of some confusion over Trump’s proposal for a U.S. takeover of Gaza once the fighting stops.

He said Palestinians would not have the right of return to the Gaza Strip under his proposal to redevelop the enclave, contradicting his own officials who had suggested Gazans would only be relocated temporarily, read the report.

In an excerpt of an interview with Fox News channel’s Bret Baier broadcast on Monday, Trump added that he thought he could make a deal with Jordan and Egypt to take the displaced Palestinians, saying the U.S. gives the two countries “billions and billions of dollars a year.”

Asked if Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza, Trump said: “No, they wouldn’t because they’re going to have much better housing.”

“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” he said, adding it would take years for Gaza to be habitable again.

In a shock announcement on Feb. 4 after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump proposed resettling Gaza’s 2.2 million Palestinians and the U.S. taking control of the seaside enclave, redeveloping it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump’s suggestion of Palestinian displacement has been repeatedly rejected by Gaza residents and Arab states, and labeled by rights advocates and the United Nations as a proposal of ethnic cleansing.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s statement that Palestinians would not be able to return to Gaza was “irresponsible.”

“We affirm that such plans are capable of igniting the region,” he told Reuters on Monday.

Netanyahu, who praised the proposal, suggested Palestinians would be allowed to return. “They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he said the day after Trump’s announcement, Reuters reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who will depart later this week for his first visit to the Middle East in the office, said on Thursday that Palestinians would have to “live somewhere else in the interim,” during reconstruction, although he declined to explicitly rule out their permanent displacement.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the disparity between Rubio and Trump’s most recent remarks on the plan.

Trump’s comments come as a fragile ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas is at risk of collapse after Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages over alleged Israeli violations of the agreement.

Israel’s Arab neighbors, including Egypt and Jordan, have said any plan to transfer Palestinians from their land would destabilize the region, read the report.

Rubio met Egypt’s Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty in Washington on Monday. Egypt’s foreign ministry said Abdelatty told Rubio that Arab countries support Palestinians in rejecting Trump’s plan. Cairo fears Palestinians could be forced across Egypt’s border with Gaza.

Trump said in the Fox News interview that between two and six communities could be built for the Palestinians “a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.”

“I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he believed the United States was making progress in its talks to end thewar between Russia and Ukraine, but declined to provide details about any communications he had had with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reported.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the two men had been in contact; that would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a U.S president since early 2022.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he believed the United States was making progress in its talks to end thewar between Russia and Ukraine, but declined to provide details about any communications he had had with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump indicated that the two men had been in contact; that would mark the first officially acknowledged conversation between Putin and a U.S president since early 2022.

Trump has promised to end the war but not set out yet in public how he would do so.

In a Friday interview with the New York Post, Trump said that he had “better not say” how many times he and Putin had spoken and did not disclose when the latest conversation had taken place.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency that “many different communications are emerging.”

“I personally may not know something, be unaware of something,” Peskov said when asked by TASS to comment. “Therefore, in this case, I can neither confirm nor deny it.”

U.S. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also declined to elaborate when asked about communications between the two countries, read the report.

“There certainly are a lot of sensitive conversations going on,” Waltz said on NBC News.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war and that he will meet with Putin to discuss it, though the date or venue for such a meeting has not been announced. Trump told reporters on Sunday that he would meet with Putin at an appropriate time.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are seen by Russia as possible venues for a summit, Reuters reported earlier this month.

In the coming days, a flurry of U.S. officials are heading to Europe in part to discuss the war, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and Keith Kellogg, the special envoy for the Ukraine war.

Waltz indicated that Trump would be willing to use sanctions and tariffs to coax Putin to the negotiating table.

Waltz said U.S. and Ukrainian officials would discuss the United States gaining access to Ukraine’s rare earth resources as compensation for U.S. aid to the eastern European ally.

On June 14, Putin set out his opening terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia, Reuters reported.

Reuters reported in November that Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine peace deal with Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists that Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO.

The Kremlin has repeatedly urged caution over speculation about contacts with the Trump team over a possible peace deal.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, was cited by the state RIA news agency on Thursday as saying that preparations for such a meeting were at “an advanced stage” and that it could take place in February or March.

Putin last spoke to former U.S. President Joe Biden in February 2022, shortly before Putin ordered thousands of troops into Ukraine.

Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in his 2024 book “War” reported that Trump had direct conversations as many as seven times with Putin after he left the White House in 2021.

Asked if that were true in an interview to Bloomberg last year, Trump said: “If I did, it’s a smart thing.” The Kremlin denied Woodward’s report.

Reuters, The Washington Post and Axios reported separately that Trump and Putin talked in early November. The Kremlin also denied those reports.

On Friday, Trump said he would probably meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy the following week to discuss ending the war. Zelenskiy told Reuters that he wanted Ukraine to supply the United States with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort.

Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, calling it a “special military operation” to protect Russian speakers and counter what he said was a grave threat to Russia from potential Ukrainian membership of NATO.

Ukraine and its Western backers, led by the United States, said the invasion was an imperial-style land grab and vowed to defeat Russian forces.

Moscow controls a chunk of Ukraine about the size of the American state of Virginia and is advancing at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion.