By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday the Gaza hostages should be released on Monday or Tuesday and that he hopes to attend a signing ceremony in Egypt and address the Israeli Knesset.

Trump opened a White House cabinet meeting by discussing a deal reached on Wednesday under which the hostages held by Hamas militants are to be released in the first phase of a broader Gaza plan. He said he believed it would lead to “lasting peace.”

Trump said under the plan, Gaza is going to be “slowly redone,” a reference to plans to rebuild the Palestinian enclave. He did not provide details other than to say “we’re going to create something where people can live. You can’t live right now in Gaza.”

Hamas is expected to release the 20 living hostages together, 72 hours after the ceasefire begins.

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“We are getting the hostages back on Tuesday – Monday or Tuesday – and that’ll be a day of joy,” Trump said.

Trump said it may be difficult to retrieve all the remains of the hostages who died in captivity immediately, “because some of the bodies are going to be a little bit hard to find.”

He said he was going to try to make the trip there to attend a signing ceremony in Egypt. The White House has been scrambling to work out the details of the hastily arranged trip.

The Israeli Knesset has asked Trump to speak, and the president said he was planning to do so if requested.

While questions remain about what happens in the region in the long term, Trump said he hoped it would lead to “an everlasting peace.”

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Jeff Mason is a White House Correspondent for Reuters. He has covered the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Trump, Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. He served as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association in 2016-2017, leading the press corps in advocating for press freedom in the early days of the Trump administration. His and the WHCA’s work was recognized with Deutsche Welle’s “Freedom of Speech Award.” Jeff has asked pointed questions of domestic and foreign leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. He is a winner of the WHCA’s “Excellence in Presidential News Coverage Under Deadline Pressure” award and co-winner of the Association for Business Journalists’ “Breaking News” award. Jeff began his career in Frankfurt, Germany as a business reporter before being posted to Brussels, Belgium, where he covered the European Union. Jeff appears regularly on television and radio and teaches political journalism at Georgetown University. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a former Fulbright scholar.

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President Donald Trump said on Thursday the Gaza hostages should be released on Monday or Tuesday and that he hopes to attend a signing ceremony in Egypt and address the Israeli Knesset.

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