‘Very optimistic’ ceasefire agreement will hold, Vance says in Israel

U.S. Vice President JD Vance is “very optimistic” that the White House-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and the Hamas terror organisation will hold, the former Ohio senator said during a press conference in Israel on Tuesday.

“What we’ve seen in the past week gives me great optimism that the ceasefire is going to hold,” Vance said, on the day after a truce resumed in Gaza following Hamas’s attacks on Israeli troops and the Jewish state’s response.

The vice president, who said as recently as a few days ago that he wasn’t sure if he was going to visit Israel, said that his visit had nothing to do with events of the past 24 hours and had been planned for months.

He said that he “wanted to check in on things” and “see how things were going and put some eyes on it.”

Maintaining the ceasefire will require “constant effort” and supervision, according to Vance.

“Can I say with 100% certainty that it’s going to work? No, but you don’t do difficult things by only doing what’s 100% certain,” Vance told reporters. “You do things by trying.”

The vice president said that everyone is focused on liberating the bodies of hostages “to their families so they can get a proper burial.” But that’s going to be hard, he said, because “some of these hostages are buried under thousands of pounds of rubble.”

The peace deal calls on Hamas to return every hostage, both living and dead. The terror group has returned all of the hostages whom it says are alive. It has returned some of the bodies of hostages whom it killed.

Vance echoed U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement about the repercussions if Hamas doesn’t cooperate with the agreement.

“Hamas is going to be obliterated,” the vice president said.

Asked how much time Hamas has to disarm—another requirement of the agreement—Vance declined to put “an explicit deadline on it.”

“A lot of this stuff is unpredictable,” he said. One Gazan region is “relatively safe” while another is “incredibly dangerous,” according to Vance.

“Part of ensuring that we get to a durable peace is to broaden the scope of the area that’s safe and the international security force is a big part of that,” he said. “We don’t yet have the international security force set up. That’s something we’re working toward.”

“A lot of this work is very hard. It’s never been done before, and in order for us to give it a chance to succeed, we’ve got to be a little bit flexible,” he said. “If we get this right, I really do think it’s going to be a domino that will lead to peace all across the region.”

Vance said that he doesn’t know what the “ultimate authority in Gaza” will look like, but the governance structure will be “very flexible” for the future. Long-term governance of Gaza will only occur after security is established, he said. He stressed that there won’t be U.S. boots on the ground in Gaza.

“What we can do is provide some useful coordination,” Vance said.

Despite Israeli concern about Turkey’s involvement, Vance said that the country has a “constructive role” to play. Israel will decide what foreign troops are involved, he added.

“No one who has been a party in this conflict can look in the past and not point at something they don’t like or disagree with,” he said. “The way that we’re going to get to peace is to focus on the future.”

“Everybody here is very willing to do that,” he added.

JNS