President Trump said it is possible that less than 20 Hamas-held Israeli hostages are still alive, fewer than previously thought, he said this week.
For the past few months, it’s been widely reported that an estimated 50 Israelis remain in Hamas captivity, with at least 20 believed to still be alive.
“So now they have 20,” Trump told reporters Friday during a press conference in the Oval Office. “But the 20 is actually probably not 20, because a couple maybe aren’t around any longer,” he added, without elaborating. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“The situation has to end, it’s extortion and it has to end,” he went on to say. “I actually think they’re safer in many ways if you went in and you really went in fast,” he said in an apparent reference to freeing the hostages militarily instead of through a deal with Hamas.
“And now we have that final little group of people. And Hamas knows that if they give them, that’s probably the end of their lives.”
“We’re doing everything we can to get the hostages out, it’s not easy,” he added.
Gal Hirsch, the government’s point man on the hostages, told the families there was no official change in the number of living hostages.
“According to Israel’s information, there is no change in the information you have received from us: 20 of the hostages are alive,” Hirsch wrote to the families, according to the Times of Israel.
Hostage families are desperate for their release.
“Mr. President, 50 hostages remain in the hands of Hamas in Gaza. For us, each and every one of them is an entire world,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said.
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