Vice President JD Vance claimed that the events of the past week make him optimistic that the ceasefire in Gaza will hold. Over the past week, Israel and Hamas have traded claims of ceasefire violations, and Israel has continued to kill Palestinians.
“Look, I think that we are one week into President Trump’s historic peace plan in the Middle East, and things are going frankly better than I expected that they were,” Vance told reporters in Israel. We are doing very well. We’re in a very good place. We’re going to have to keep working on it, but I think we have the team to do exactly that.”
The Vice President is on a tour of the Middle East in an effort to save the ceasefire agreement. On Sunday, Israel claimed Hamas conducted an attack in Rafah and conducted airstrikes across Gaza. Dozens of Palestinians, including children and journalists, were killed.
However, Ryan Grim reported speaking with a source who said the White House was immediately aware that Hamas did not conduct an attack. The explosion was caused by an Israeli bulldozer hitting an unexploded munition. After Washington informed Tel Aviv that it was known that there was no Hamas attack, Israel halted the strikes.
Soon after the explosion in Rafah, I’m told by a source familiar, the White House and Pentagon knew that the incident was caused by an Israeli settler bulldozer running over unexploded ordnance — contradicting Netanyahu’s claim that Hamas had popped up from tunnels.
After… https://t.co/Xwy63sEL3M
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 19, 2025
Stil. Vance claimed he was very optimistic that the ceasefire would hold. “What we have seen over the past week gives me great optimism,” he said.
Israel has also claimed that Hamas is violating the ceasefire agreement by not returning the bodies of deceased hostages fast enough. Vance urged Tel Aviv to have a “little bit of patience” in the return of the bodies.
“Some of these hostages are buried under thousands of pounds of rubble. Some of the hostages, nobody even knows where they are,” he explained.
