President Donald Trump’s 21-point plan to end the war in Gaza has given families of hostages new hope for the release of their loved ones, but it has also stirred fears that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could obstruct the proposal.
Vicki Cohen, mother of hostage Nimrod Cohen, said Sunday that while the plan opens a door, her family has grown weary after two years of frustration. “Trump will have to force him to end the war,” she said in an interview with Ynet. “We have been on this roller coaster for two years. There have been many opportunities and attempts, and the prime minister sabotaged them. Many hopes were dashed.”
Cohen said her husband Yehuda attended Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations but walked out halfway through. “He stood up in protest, and he was not the only one. Other families left too. It was to show that we oppose his policy, that he is leading Israeli society to ruin,” she said.
Cohen also responded to a warning by Einav Zangauker, another prominent hostage family member, who said Netanyahu should not return to Israel without a deal. “If there is another sabotage, we will raise hell throughout the country until the children come home,” Cohen said.
Yael Adar, mother of the late hostage Tamir Adar, voiced fears that the United States might push to end the war without securing a hostage release. “Because of our policy and the desire to continue annexation, American pressure could come to end the war without a deal,” she said.
Adar criticized Netanyahu’s UN speech. “He came to remind the world there was Oct. 7. Where is ‘you shall not demand what you do not fulfill’? You remind and forget part of the hostages. On the morning of the massacre my son had plans for a life, and you erase him?”
She said she wrote to Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and missing persons, to express her anger. “I explained to him that it tore me apart, that I am angry. I cried my heart out as if I had been told again that my dear son is not alive,” she said.
Boaz Miran, brother of hostage Omri Miran, said he does not believe Hamas will accept Trump’s proposal under its current conditions. “There is no chance Hamas will accept Trump’s initiative with demands for disarmament and immediate release of all the hostages,” he said.
Miran said any agreement must include Hamas’s disarmament. “Without it being expelled and neutralized, no one will enter the Strip—not the Palestinian Authority, not the Emiratis, not the Americans. Everything will remain under its threat,” he said.
“Hamas has engraved on its banner the destruction of Israel and the Jews,” he added. “If all who committed crimes, rape and murder are expelled and neutralized, I am willing to end the war. But if a deal does not work, we must move to military pressure and a siege.”
Trump unveiled his initiative at the United Nations last week during meetings with Arab leaders. The plan is a comprehensive framework designed to end the war in Gaza and lay the groundwork for a future political arrangement.
According to details published Saturday, the plan calls for the release of all hostages within 48 hours in exchange for thousands of Palestinian prisoners. It includes a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, a guarantee that Israel will not target Qatar, and the creation of a technocratic transitional government under international supervision. The plan bars Hamas from holding any role in future governance and includes provisions for reconstruction of Gaza as well as a possible pathway toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.