Donald Trump, who wants the war in the Gaza Strip to end, welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House yesterday, Monday, with the Israeli prime minister announcing that he had proposed in a letter to the relevant committee to award the US president the Nobel Peace Prize.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s third visit to the White House since Donald Trump returned to it came at a crucial time, with the US president hoping to seize the opportunity presented to him after last month’s ceasefire ended the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

“I don’t think there is any obstacle. I think things are going very well,” Mr. Trump said at the start of the meeting between the two leaders, asked what is preventing a cease-fire agreement.

With one seated across from the other at a long table as he was being served dinner, the US president asserted that Hamas “wants a ceasefire“. “They want a meeting and they want a ceasefire,” he insisted.

For his part, the Israeli prime minister said he proposed giving a Nobel Peace Prize to the Republican. “As we speak, he is restoring peace in one country” after another, “in one region after another,” he praised.

The meeting was recorded as indirect negotiations between delegations of the Israeli government and Hamas are underway in Doha.

Since the day before yesterday, Sunday, two rounds of indirect negotiations between the two sides have taken place in the Qatari capital, Palestinian sources briefed on the matter said. But without “any significant progress,” one told the French news agency. Early this morning, the Israeli army said five of its members were killed and two others seriously wounded in fighting in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, without further details.

U.S. special envoy Steve Whitcoff is expected at the White House later this week, according to the White House. Earlier, US presidential spokeswoman Caroline Levitt assured that the Republican’s “absolute priority” is “ending the war in Gaza and returning all hostages.”

On Sunday, the Republican said he believed there was a “good chance” of a deal being struck “this week.”

The indirect negotiations in close quarters through the mediators – Qatar, Egypt, the US – concern “the mechanisms of implementation” of the possible deal and the “exchange” of Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, a Palestinian source aware of what was being negotiated said.

The Hamas delegation is in one room, that of Israel in another in the same building, he added.

“Hamas is treating the issue seriously and wishes to reach an agreement to end the war, (to end) the suffering of our people, on condition that the Israeli side shows good faith and does not seek to obstruct or prolong the process,” the source said.

Last night, Netanyahu once again ruled out any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, stressing that Israel would maintain “forever” control of security in the Gaza Strip. “People say that this is not a complete state, that it is not a state. Are we being fooled?” he said, judging that there was a “state”, that of “Hamas in Gaza” and it was not built “upwards” but “downwards”: they built bunker bunkers, terrorist tunnels” to “massacre our people, rape our women, behead our men, invade our cities and our kibbutzim to commit horrific massacres” that had not been recorded “since the Holocaust” and therefore “the people” (in Israel) “are not going to say ‘let’s give them another state'” because “it will be a platform for the destruction of Israel.”

According to Palestinian sources, the proposal under calls for a 60-day ceasefire, the release of about half of the hostages – ten – who remain alive and the surrender of bodies of the dead in exchange for the release of Palestinians held by Israeli authorities.

Dozens of people, including relatives of hostages in Gaza, gathered yesterday in front of the US embassy annex in Tel Aviv to demand that US President Trump secure their release. The protesters waved American flags, posters with pictures of hostages and a banner reading “President Trump, make history, bring them home, end the war.”

Of the 251 people kidnapped during the Hamas assault on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, the trigger for the war, 49 remain in the Palestinian enclave, but 27 of them have been declared dead by the Israeli army.

During the first ceasefire agreement, in November 2023, which lasted a week, then the second, for two months earlier this year, several dozen hostages were released in exchange for the release of Palestinian inmates in Israeli detention centers.