ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said that he has instructed negotiators to head to Egypt to iron out the details of Hamas' release of Israeli hostages in accordance with US President Donald Trump's peace proposal for the Gaza Strip.

"I have instructed the negotiating team to go to Egypt to finalize the technical details. The intention is to limit the negotiations to a few days," said Netanyahu in a video address, coming amid reports of Trump sending envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff to Cairo to engage in talks regarding the Gaza Strip.

Hamas on Friday announced that it had agreed to key points of a 20-point Trump proposal to end the war in Gaza, granting "its approval to release all occupation prisoners, alive and deceased, according to the exchange formula." The release of the hostages is set to begin a process whereby Israel will begin a phased withdrawal in the Strip and "250 life sentence prisoners plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after 7 October 2023, including all women and children detained in that context," according to the plan.

Egyptian state-affiliated media said Saturday that the country’s foreign ministry had confirmed that Cairo will mediate a meeting between Hamas and Israel in the Egyptian capital on Monday, October 6, hoping to end the war and the tribulations of the Palestinian people.

Netanyahu argued that "military and diplomatic pressure" had driven Hamas to accept the proposal, warning that the militant group "will be disarmed... it will happen either diplomatically… or militarily by us… I also told Washington that. It will be achieved either the easy way or the hard way, but it will be achieved," he added.

"I hope that in the coming days we will be able to bring back all our hostages… during the Sukkot holidays," said Netanyahu.

Sukkot is a Jewish holiday that begins on Monday and ends on October 13.

After a ground incursion by Hamas on October 7, 2023, which killed over 1,200 people, Israel launched a retaliatory campaign on the Gaza Strip that has since killed over 66,000 people. The military offensive, accompanied by an embargo on humanitarian aid entering the Strip, has rendered the city a hellscape for its inhabitants.

According to a Gaza health ministry statement on Saturday, 459 people have died of malnutrition in the Strip, including 154 children, noting that since a declaration of famine by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification in August, 181 deaths have been recorded, including 39 children.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump said on Truth Social that Israel “has stopped the bombing in order to give the Hostage release and Peace Deal a chance.”