By James Mackenzie, Jana Choukeir and Maha El Dahan
JERUSALEM/DUBAI (Reuters) -Israel’s military has called up reservists in preparation for a possible resumption of fighting in Gaza if Hamas fails to meet a Saturday deadline to release more Israeli hostages and a nearly month-old ceasefire breaks down.
Concern that the ceasefire will collapse is growing as fury mounts in Arab countries over President Donald Trump’s plan for the United States to take over Gaza, resettle its Palestinian inhabitants and build an international beach resort.
Under the ceasefire deal in force since January 19, Hamas agreed to free three more hostages on Saturday. But the Palestinian militant group said this week it was suspending the handover over what it said were Israeli violations of the terms.
Trump responded by saying all hostages must be freed by noon on Saturday or he would “let hell break out”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then warned on Tuesday that his country would resume “intense fighting” if Hamas did not meet the deadline, but did not say how many hostages should be freed.
Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to gather forces in and around Gaza, and the military announced it was deploying additional forces to Israel’s south, including mobilising reservists.
The standoff threatens to reignite a conflict that has devastated the Gaza Strip, internally displaced most of its people and caused shortages of food and running water, and pushed the Middle East to the brink of a wider regional war.
Gazans expressed alarm that the ceasefire might collapse and urged Hamas and Israeli leaders to agree on an extension.
“We had barely started believing that a truce would happen and that a solution was on the way, God willing,” said Lotfy Abu Taha, a resident of Rafah in southern Gaza. “The people are suffering. The people are the victims.”
Israeli officials said government ministers had endorsed Trump’s threat to cancel the ceasefire unless all hostages are released on Saturday.
Hamas said it remained committed to the agreement but has not agreed to release the hostages on Saturday.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said mediators had stepped up their intervention “to prevent things sliding into a real crisis.”
Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said in Dubai that Trump’s vision for Gaza could lead the Middle East into a new cycle of crises with a “damaging effect on peace and stability.”
Trump has said Palestinians in Gaza could settle in countries such as Jordan and Egypt. Both reject the proposal.
Egypt will host an emergency Arab summit on February 27 to discuss “serious” developments for Palestinians.
In a sign of Arab anger over Trump’s vision of Gaza, two Egyptian security sources said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would not go to Washington for talks if the agenda included Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians.
The date for such a visit has not been announced, and the Egyptian presidency and foreign ministry did not comment.
SOME HOSTAGES ALREADY FREED
The Gaza war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and over 250 were taken as hostages into Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
In response, Israel began its military offensive against Hamas which has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Hamas has freed 16 Israeli hostages from an initial group of 33 children, women and older men to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in the first stage of the ceasefire deal. It also returned five Thai hostages.
Negotiations on a second phase, which mediators hoped would include agreement on releasing the remaining hostages and a full Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza, should be under way in Doha but an Israeli team returned home on Monday.
Palestinians fear a repeat of the “Nakba”, or catastrophe, when nearly 800,000 people fled or were driven out during the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation. Israel denies the account they were forced out. Trump has said they would have no right to return under his plan for Gaza.
Trump meanwhile wants Saudi Arabia, which has vast influence in other Arab and Muslim countries, to normalise ties with Israel. Riyadh has previously said it will not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.
Under his first administration, Trump brokered normalisation accords between Israel and some Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates.
Asked if the UAE could find common ground with Washington on Gaza, Abu Dhabi’s ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, said Washington’s approach was difficult. “But at the end of the day we’re all in a solution-seeking business, we just don’t know where it’s going to land yet,” he said.
Aboul Gheit said the idea of the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 – in which Arab nations offered Israel normalised ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured during a 1967 war – would be reintroduced.
(Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by Bernadette Baum and Timothy Heritage)
