Trump says 'war is over' after Netanyahu claims 'campaign not over'
US President Donald Trump has insisted that Israel's war on Gaza has ended, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggesting that the military campaign on the Palestinian enclave will continue.
Late on Sunday, Netanyahu released a statement marking the prisoner exchange taking place on Monday between Israel and Hamas, which he called a "historic event".
"Wherever we fought, we won," he said. "But I must tell you at the same time, the campaign is not over. We still have major security challenges ahead of us."
Netanyahu made further claims that "some of our enemies are trying to regroup and attack us again", insisting that Israel will take on these challenges.
Similarly, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz posted on X on Sunday: "Israel's great challenge after the phase of returning the hostages will be the destruction of all of Hamas's terror tunnels in Gaza, directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism to be established under the leadership and supervision of the United States."
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"I have instructed the [Israeli military] to prepare for carrying out the mission," he added.
But Trump, when asked about Netanyahu's remarks onboard Air Force One en route to Israel, replied: "The war is over. It's over. Okay? You understand that?
"There are a lot of reasons why [the cease-fire] is going to hold, but people are tired of it. It's been centuries... People are going to behave. Everybody knows their place. It's gonna be great for everybody."
The US president has now arrived in Israel, where he was greeted at Ben Gurion Airport by Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog.
Later, he will address the Knesset and meet with Netanyahu and the families of the 20 freed living captives.
Then he will travel to Egypt to co-chair an international summit in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
The summit is expected to finalise the Hamas-Israel agreement to end the war in Gaza. Neither Israel nor Hamas will participate directly in the event.
“The war is over,” says @POTUS on his Gaza Peace Deal.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 12, 2025
“I think [the ceasefire] is going to hold… I think people are tired.” pic.twitter.com/0qztDnxZmN
Hamas released a statement on Monday morning, saying Netanyahu was ultimately "forced to submit to the resistance's conditions" through a prisoner exchange and the end of the war on Gaza.
"The resistance made every effort to preserve the lives of the occupation's prisoners, despite the attempts of the war criminal Netanyahu and his terrorist army to target and eliminate them," it said.
"This comes at a time when our prisoners in the occupation's prisons are subjected to all forms of abuse, torture, and killing."
Prison exchange deal
Israel is expected to release 1,966 Palestinian prisoners as part of the truce agreement in exchange for 20 Israeli captives.
The group of Palestinian detainees includes 250 people serving long or life sentences, and approximately 1,718 individuals who were kidnapped from the Gaza Strip over the past two years.
The list does not include high-profile Palestinian figures whose release was requested by Hamas but rejected by Israel.
The prisoner swap is part of an agreement signed in Egypt last week to end the war, lift Israeli restrictions on humanitarian aid, and ensure Israel's withdrawal from urban areas of the Gaza Strip.
Currently, an estimated 11,100 Palestinian prisoners are being held across 23 prisons, detention facilities and interrogation centres - more than double the number held before 7 October 2023.
This figure excludes unaccounted-for detainees held in Israeli military camps, primarily Palestinians abducted from Gaza, whose precise numbers are unknown but believed to be in the thousands.
Palestinian prisoner rights groups reported that at least 77 prisoners have died in Israeli custody over the past two years. They added that dozens of detainees from Gaza who were killed remain forcibly disappeared.
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