President Donald Trump assured reporters that the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas remains secure, dismissing speculation that it may unravel. Speaking aboard Air Force One as he flew back from Mar-a-Lago to Washington, Trump attributed the most recent flare-up to individuals acting independently. “Rogue elements, not Hamas leadership,” were responsible for the latest attack on Israel, Trump claimed. “We’ll handle it tough but fair. The ceasefire will hold.”
Vice President JD Vance, who had just returned to Andrews Air Force Base after attending the U.S. Marine Corps’ 250th-anniversary celebration in San Diego, also commented on the situation. When asked if he planned to visit Israel soon, Vance said, “Maybe. We’re trying to figure it out. Of course, we want to go and see how things are progressing.”
“I think someone from the administration will definitely be there in the coming days. It might be me, but we’re still working out the logistics,” he continued, hinting at an imminent high-level visit to the region.
Addressing questions about whether he believed the truce would endure following renewed violence, Vance struck a cautious but optimistic tone. “Look, it’s going to be complicated. Even in the best-case scenario, if this process leads to a sustainable, long-term peace, as the president and I hope, there will still be bumps along the way.”
He acknowledged that tensions were inevitable, saying, “There will be instances where Hamas fires on Israel, and Israel will of course have to respond. There will be moments when it’s unclear who exactly is acting inside Gaza. But we believe this is the best chance for stable peace, and even if it succeeds, there will be ups and downs, and we’ll have to monitor it closely.”
Vance also underscored the ongoing challenges to lasting stability in Gaza, warning that “there is currently no existing security infrastructure to guarantee Hamas’s disarmament.”
Reports over the weekend suggested that the vice president is likely to visit Israel next week — his first trip there since assuming office. At the same time, U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff is preparing to return to the Middle East to advance discussions on the next phase of the peace framework and to coordinate efforts to recover the remains of hostages still held by Hamas.
Earlier this year, in May, Vance had considered traveling to Israel but ultimately postponed the visit due to active Israel Defense Forces operations in Gaza, a senior American official told Walla.
{Matzav.com}Democratic socialist mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani spoke out Sunday for the first time about his connection to Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who has long faced accusations of ties to terrorism, dismissing the uproar as an attack on his religion.
Earlier in the day, Mamdani had smiled and waved off questions about the issue, refusing to respond. But when he finally did address the controversy, he claimed that the criticism stemmed from anti-Muslim bias rather than his own actions.
“The same imam met with Mayor Bloomberg, met with Mayor De Blasio, campaigned alongside Eric Adams, and the only time it became an issue of national attention was when I met with him,” Mamdani told reporters at an unrelated press event.
“That’s because of the fact of my faith and because I’m on the precipice of winning this election,” the Democratic front-runner continued, before taking aim at his opponent, Andrew Cuomo.
“Andrew Cuomo joins a list of those who would cheer threats to blow up my car, those who would call me a jihadist – Laura Loomer, Elon Musk, the vice president and he would rather seek to smear my plans to support queer New Yorkers across the five boroughs than speak about his own, and that’s because he has none,” Mamdani said.
When questioned earlier in the day about Wahhaj, Mamdani refused to offer any explanation.
“Mr. Mamdani, anything to say about the imam? He said some nasty stuff, does it bug you?” a New York Post reporter asked. “Anything?”
Mamdani simply smirked and walked away without responding, entering a waiting SUV. Later that afternoon, he again grinned but avoided answering further questions about the Brooklyn imam, who has been accused of anti-gay rhetoric and alleged extremist connections.
The controversy began Friday after Mamdani met with Wahhaj and praised him online.
“Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,” Mamdani wrote on X.
That post immediately sparked backlash because of Wahhaj’s controversial history.
According to The New York Times, Wahhaj was named an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people, after investigators learned that several suspects had attended his mosque.
Though Wahhaj was never charged and denied any wrongdoing, he later defended the perpetrators and publicly labeled the FBI and CIA as “the real terrorists.”
His family has also been tied to disturbing events. In 2018, his son was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison after authorities discovered he had been training a group of teenagers in a New Mexico desert to carry out terror attacks. Wahhaj had homeschooled his son but later called him mentally ill and claimed he was the one who contacted police to stop him.
Both of Mamdani’s main rivals — Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa — condemned his association with the imam, calling it unacceptable for anyone seeking the city’s highest office.
“New York needs a mayor who protects New Yorkers from terrorism, not embraces terrorists,” Sliwa said.
{Matzav.com}
A fiery exchange erupted at the White House on Friday when President Donald Trump pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to agree to Russia’s latest proposal for ending the war, warning that Vladimir Putin had threatened to “destroy” Ukraine if it refused, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Citing multiple sources, the Financial Times said the meeting quickly spiraled into a shouting match, with Trump “cursing all the time.” He reportedly brushed off military maps outlining Ukraine’s battlefronts, demanded that Zelenskyy give up the entire Donbas region, and repeated several of Putin’s arguments from a conversation the two leaders had held the day before.
Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington had been aimed at securing long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, but Trump rejected the request, the report stated. The confrontation resembled a tense February encounter, when Trump and Vice President JD Vance scolded Zelenskyy for what they described as insufficient appreciation toward the United States.
European diplomats who were later briefed on the meeting said Trump echoed Putin’s language, referring to the invasion as a “special operation.” According to the report, Trump told Zelenskyy, “If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you,” and scoffed at the battlefield maps, remarking, “This red line, I don’t even know where this is. I’ve never been there.”
Putin’s new plan, delivered to Trump the previous day, called for Ukraine to yield portions of the Donbas in return for limited territories in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. This represented a slight modification from the proposal Putin presented during his August meeting with Trump in Alaska, when he demanded full control of Donbas to lock in current front-line positions.
Ukrainian leaders swiftly dismissed the offer. Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs Ukraine’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, declared, “To give [the Donbas] to Russia without a fight is unacceptable for Ukrainian society, and Putin knows that.” He added that the entire plan was meant to “cause division within Ukraine and undermine our unity.”
{Matzav.com}
CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired a detailed interview on Sunday evening featuring Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the two U.S. envoys appointed by President Donald Trump who helped broker the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“The biggest message that we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over. If you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better,” Kushner said, emphasizing the administration’s vision for long-term regional stability.
Addressing Hamas’s post-war actions, Kushner remarked, “Hamas right now is doing exactly what you would expect a terrorist organization to do, which is to try to reconstitute and take back their positions.”
He went on to explain, “The success or failure of this will be if Israel and this international mechanism is able to create a viable alternative. If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future.”
When asked to clarify President Trump’s statement that “Hamas must disarm, or we will disarm them, perhaps violently,” and whether that suggested the U.S. would send troops into Gaza, Kushner responded, “That’s not the intent. [Trump’s] statement is that he wants to see this done, and he’s fully committed to seeing it done. And– and he’s gonna continue to work hard to make sure that it is completed.”
Pressed by interviewer Lesley Stahl on who would carry out Hamas’s disarmament, Kushner explained, “The agreement is that an International Stabilization Force will build a local Palestinian police force, and there will be an agreement reached between them on how to create a secure and viable Gaza. And by the way, none of the reconstruction money is gonna be going in until you have terror-free zones, because nobody wants to invest this money into a place where it’s just gonna get destroyed again by terrorism.”
Stahl then questioned whether Hamas was cooperating sincerely in the recovery of deceased hostages’ bodies. Kushner replied, “As far as we’ve seen from what’s being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far. That could break down at any minute, but right now– we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.”
Witkoff recounted a key moment during negotiations in Egypt where Hamas delegates, including Khalil al-Hayya, participated. Al-Hayya survived an Israeli strike in Doha, but his son was killed. “We expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son. He mentioned it. And I told him that I had lost a son, and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children,” said Witkoff.
Kushner reflected on that scene, saying, “What I saw at that moment was very interesting. You had– we go into a room and you have the Qataris, the Turks, and the Egyptians. And then we meet the four representatives of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization. And I’m looking at these guys and I’m thinking these are hardened guys who have been through two years of war. They’ve obviously, you know– they– they green-lit an assault that raped and murdered and did some of the most barbaric things. They’ve been holding hostages while Gaza’s been, you know, bombed. And they’ve withstood all the suffering. But when Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.”
Explaining the mechanics of the talks, Witkoff noted, “The Qataris were the interlocutors directly talking to Hamas. But then we were on the phone with the Qataris, the Egyptians, and the Turks. And the notion was to convince everybody that those 20 Israeli hostages who were alive, were no longer assets for Hamas. They were a liability.”
“At the end of the day, it goes back to the issues were pretty simple,” Kushner added. “We wanted the hostages to come out. We wanted a real ceasefire that both sides would respect. We needed a way to bring humanitarian aid into the people. And then we had to write all these complex words to deal with the 50 years of stupid word games that everyone in that region is so used to playing. Both sides wanted the objective. And we just needed to find a way to help everyone get there.”
The pair underscored that President Trump remains fully committed to enforcing the deal, adding, “We will not allow the terms of this deal for any party to be violated. And both sides will be treated fairly.”
An excerpt of the interview had been released the night before, in which Kushner and Witkoff described their shock over Israel’s strike in Qatar. “I think both Jared and I felt, I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed,” said Witkoff.
Kushner described Trump’s reaction to the Israeli operation, noting, “I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing, and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”
In the full broadcast, both envoys commented on Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s apology to the Qataris, rejecting the notion that it was imposed by Trump. “I wouldn’t call it forced. I would say that apology was pivotal. It was the linchpin that got us to the next place. It was really, really important that it happened. And I think we spent– with the president, at his direction, we spent a lot of time discussing it with [Minister Ron] Dermer, discussing it with– Prime Minister Netanyahu. And then the president weighed in,” explained Witkoff.
Kushner added, “President Trump had a great line– at his speech in the Knesset where he said, ‘Bibi’s very tough, but that’s what makes him great.’ And ultimately, Prime Minister Netanyahu wasn’t gonna do anything, or say anything, or agree to anything that he didn’t feel comfortable with. But he knew what needed to be done at that moment to make peace. And I give him a lot of credit for meeting the moment and doing what needed to be done in order to get this deal done.”
“The goal of the phone call was to help things move forward,” Kushner continued. “And now there’s a trilateral mechanism between the countries which didn’t happen before. So this is the first time there’s a formal mechanism now between Israel and Qatar. And I believe over time Israel and Qatar could actually turn out to be incredible allies in the region to advance things forward.”
Witkoff concluded, “The apology needed to happen. It just did. We were not moving forward without that apology. And the president said to him, ‘People apologize.’ – I remember him saying, ‘I apologize sometimes.’”
{Matzav.com}
During a conversation with reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, President Donald Trump affirmed that the Gaza ceasefire was still active, saying, “Yes, it is.”
He elaborated, “We want to make sure that it’s going to be very peaceful with Hamas and, as you know, they’ve been quite rambunctious.”
“They’ve been doing some shooting, and we think maybe the leadership isn’t involved in that. You know, some rebels within. But either way, it’s going to be it’s going to be handled properly. It’s going to be handled toughly but properly,” Trump continued.
Trump’s remarks followed reports that Hamas had fired an antitank missile at an IDF engineering vehicle, killing two Israeli soldiers—an act that constituted a breach of the ceasefire.
In the wake of the attack, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu ordered the suspension of humanitarian aid to Gaza in retaliation for the violation.
Shortly afterward, Israel announced that it would resume sending humanitarian supplies to Gaza.
Although Hamas has released the 20 surviving hostages it was holding as part of Trump’s Gaza plan, the group has failed to return the bodies of those who were killed, claiming it does not know the whereabouts of most of them.
{Matzav.com}
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