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Trump, World Leaders Sign Gaza Ceasefire Deal; All Living Hostages Freed After Two Years of Hamas Captivity; Hamas Hands Over Four Coffins With Remains of Deceased Hostages. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired October 13, 2025 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[14:00:36]

ERICA HILL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": The Breaking News at this hour, we've just been watching live pictures of President Trump as he leaves that summit in Egypt. Over the last hour, he gave a speech after holding a ceremonial signing of the Gaza ceasefire deal. We are still waiting for word of what exactly is in that document. The president, alongside world leaders, celebrating what he calls a monumental moment for the world

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Together, we've achieved what everybody said was impossible. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East and it's a very simple expression, peace in the Middle East, and we've heard it for many years, but nobody thought it could ever get there and now we're there.

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HILL: An incredibly emotional start to the day as the world watched reunions between now former hostages and their loved ones, after Hamas freed all 20 of the remaining living hostages. The families there embracing 738 grueling days they had spent in captivity. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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HILL (voice-over): Just so many remarkable moments that families have waited 738 days for. These images that we're showing you now, that's Omri Miran, who's playing with his daughters for the first time in two years. He and his girls, as you can see, they're actually wearing not only matching t-shirts of course, but matching smiles.

Inside Gaza, tearful celebrations also playing out as hundreds of released Palestinian prisoners arrived in Khan Younis, crowds lining the streets, cheering as one bus after another pulled in. And we are also receiving some somber and more sobering pictures coming into CNN. This is the transfer of coffins containing the remains of four deceased Israeli hostages, a somber moment for Israel, for their families, and a reminder of the many lives lost in this war.

CNN Political and Global Affairs Analyst, Barak Ravid joins us now. So Barak, in this moment, it has been quite a day, beginning with that joy, with the elation of these hostages being released and being reunited with their families. And now this moment, as we see the remains of four of those hostages also being returned. A bit of a roller coaster for Israel, but so remarkable as well.

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yeah. And I think we're just in the middle of the process because there are still 24 deceased hostages that their bodies are still held by Hamas. Hamas only gave four bodies out of the 28 that it is holding. And I think this was sort of a moment today that while there was a lot of happiness for the 20 live hostages that came out, there was also on the Israeli side, as far as I hear, disappointment that only four families got their loved ones back in order to bury them and pay respects.

HILL: Yeah. Understandably, heart wrenching for those other families, as you noted. I also wanted to ask you, as this moves forward, right, this is step one, as we know, as we look into this next phase, you have some new reporting today about how this came together. The assurances that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner gave directly to Hamas leaders, that President Trump would not allow Israel to resume the war once the hostages were freed. Can you talk to me a little bit more about those assurances and what the plan is to enforce that moving forward?

[14:05:00]

RAVID: So first, I think it was a very dramatic meeting last Wednesday -- last Wednesday night when basically the situation was sort of a stalemate in the negotiations. And the Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators came to it (inaudible) Kushner, and told them, now is the time for you to meet with the Hamas leaders in order to try and break the log jam, and they did it. They met in a villa in the Four Seasons Hotel in Sharm El Sheikh, with Khalil al-Hayya, the head of the Hamas negotiation team, the same person that Israel tried to assassinate only three weeks ago.

And he asked them, do you have a message for me from President Trump? And they told him, we do. And what President Trump wants to tell you is, A, you'll be treated fairly. B, he stands completely behind his 20-point peace plan. And C, he's going to enforce it and make sure that it is implemented, and he will not allow anybody to unilaterally violate it. And I think that from what I heard from three sources, that meeting basically was what led to the deal.

It was what led Hamas to say yes, because they felt that they now have confidence that the U.S. will not allow Prime Minister Netanyahu to just unilaterally blow up the ceasefire as he did last March.

HILL: Barak, really appreciate it and good to have that additional reporting from you as well. Thank you. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": So as part of the ceasefire deal, hundreds of Palestinians were freed from Israeli jails and they arrived by the busloads to cheering crowds in Gaza and the West Bank. Well over 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the October 7th attacks in Israel. Washington Post columnist Shadi Hamid is here with us. Shadi, how are you seeing this moment?

SHADI HAMID, COLUMNIST, WASHINGTON POST: Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's a great day. There's an end to the hostilities and the killing and Israel's bombardment of Gaza. But we have to remember, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are now going to be trying to return to their homes and finding out there are no homes to return to, that their neighborhoods are completely in rubble.

And I mean, that's going to be really hard to take on. How are these -- how are these people going to live in the meantime? And I think there's also a sense that Trump deserves credit for this, but the U.S. played a role of kind of both the arsonist and the firefighter, that the U.S. was enabling Israel's bombardment of Gaza for many months. I mean, this didn't have to continue up until now. And over the spring and summer, we saw Israel using more brutal tactics against Palestinians and the U.S. kept on sending weapons and military aid.

So, there's a sense of also this being too little, too late. But again, we needed an end to the war and this is a path to that. I mean, let's just hope that there isn't some kind of breakdown in the coming weeks and months and Israel has another justification to kind of go in and resume bombing parts of Gaza. So I think it's a mixed bag in that sense. And we shouldn't -- I just worry that there's all this talk of celebration and a new dawn, people have talked about a new dawn in the Middle East. For the entirety of my adult life, each president comes in with these high expectations.

So the hope now is that Trump will really stay focused on this. The danger with Trump is that he's focused for a little bit, then he moves on to other things and then things sort of disintegrate. So Trump really, he's the guarantor of this.

KEILAR: Yeah. And that's, we -- our Becky Anderson was saying, she was speaking, I think to the Egyptian foreign minister and his goal is to keep Trump focused on this, to your point there. You have a new book and I think it's incredibly relevant to this moment, "The Case for American Power," where you write about, and I'm quoting from the Simon & Schuster blurb here, "why American dominance, despite its many flaws, remains the world's best hope." To you, someone who has been critical about America's role in the world and where you are trying to be constructively critical in this book as well, how does what we have seen in recent days make the case for American power?

HAMID: Well, it shows that the U.S. was the only party that could really bring this to an end. I mean, what we saw in recent weeks was Trump putting concerted pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and like, making sure each step of the way that he would stay committed to this path. That wouldn't have happened with any other country. The U.S. is still indispensable in that way.

So, I am very critical of America's role in the Middle East over the past few decades. It really is, in some ways, a terrible record. But at the same time, there is no other option. America is preferable to the available alternative. So one thing I'm trying to do with this book is to send a message to kind of younger progressives and people who are skeptical of America and say, "Listen, America is still worth fighting for and believing in.

[14:10:00]

And don't exit from the political game altogether. Your voices need to be in the political process." So I think that's really important for the next 5, 10, 15 years. I mean, things don't look good now, but we have to be thinking about what role America is going to play, in subsequent terms and whoever the president happens to be in 2028 or 2032.

KEILAR: Where do you see Hamas' role in this? Where do you see the Palestinian Authority? What does that look like to you?

HAMID: Yeah, so I mean, the real question is how do you disarm Hamas? And that is not yet quite clear how that's to be worked out. But also, it's good that in the 20-point plan, there is a path for Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence and give up their arms to get amnesty or get safe passage outside of Gaza. Because at the end of the day, there are still going to be -- there still will be a significant Hamas presence.

So you can't just pretend they don't exist and you can't eradicate every single member of Hamas, nor should you. That would just be -- and that didn't even happen, not that I like this comparison too much, but when we talk --

KEILAR: You say, "Nor should you." Your case for that is what?

HAMID: I mean, you can't, you shouldn't kill like low-level members of Hamas, people who were not implicated in October 7th. October 7th was done by a small group of senior military commanders. Israel should have the right to kill them and has killed many of them, if not most of them, right? So, but Hamas is a popular movement and there has to be some way to bring in the low-level members into the political process because you don't want them to play spoiler.

If they feel like they have no path forward, if they feel -- you don't want them to go back to arms again or to find ways to kind of undermine the path towards a kind of peaceful settlement. And even if you take the example of de-Nazification, low and mid-level members of the Nazi Party were re-integrated into German society. It's not as if everyone was imprisoned or executed because you can't do that at such a large scale.

If you're talking about a movement that has tens of thousands of people and many more sympathizers, you have to find a way to bring people into the process and integrate them.

KEILAR: Shadi Hamid, great to have you. Thank you so much for being with us.

HAMID: Thanks for having me. KEILAR: And still to come, we have more on our Breaking News, coverage of the Gaza ceasefire deal and the emotional reunions as the remaining living hostages from Gaza returned to Israel after two years of war.

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[14:17:15]

KEILAR: In his speech before the Knesset, President Trump said, "Today marks the historic dawn of a new Middle East." That new beginning also includes the deployment of 200 American troops on the ground in Israel. And there are now calls for the U.S. to also send military support inside Gaza to help stabilize the region. Let's discuss the possible dangers of this mission with CNN Military Analyst and retired U.S. Army Major General James "Spider" Marks.

General, let's talk about that. Your concerns about a U.S. role in Gaza, in the region, where troops will be monitoring the plan's implementation.

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, Brianna, I think the presence, the U.S. presence of forces on the ground at Gaza is a non-starter. Certainly, the U.S. will be on the periphery. I think it starts with at the border between Gaza and Egypt. United States should have a presence, both diplomatic, certainly intelligence, and the capacity with technical support and advisory support to get a good sense of what's going on.

Logistics support can be -- can also come over the shore, certainly in the Eastern Med. We have a checkered past doing that before, if you'll recall, a few months ago, we tried to get that done during the fighting and that kind of went sideways big time very quickly. But there are ways to do that now, now that it is not a contested area or at least ostensibly a contested area. Hamas has agreed to the peace deal. We'll see how that thing plays out.

But the U.S. forces will very much be a part of the Israeli efforts moving forward in terms of the withdrawal of the Israeli forces from Gaza. And then in terms of what are the necessary support, logistics, intelligence, types of requirements in order to integrate now a peacekeeping force. And we can talk about the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking, let there be no doubt. These regional militaries that have signed up to be a part of this peacekeeping force, this force that's going to be on the ground, there will be contested areas.

You just don't walk in, separate combatants, which clearly we have right now. We have a line of demarcation, but it's incredibly dangerous. And those regional militaries are going to have to be able to make peace. Hamas certainly is not going to completely go away very, very easily. They are recruiting. There is tremendous bloodletting that's taking place right now between Hamas and those that have provided support to the Israeli forces over the course of the past two years.

So, this kind of reality makes it very, very difficult moving forward. But, let's not qualify this. I mean, this is in a historically unprecedented time, if you'll allow me to qualify, unprecedented.

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I mean this truly, we are at a place where we've never been before. So this is a real opportunity to have this blossom of goodness, understanding that there can be weeds in the garden. Let's rip them out, but let's move forward.

KEILAR: Yeah, it's huge. And I think there's a sense that the pieces kind of fell into place rather suddenly here recently to make this happen. But General, certainly this is the culmination of a number of different events that have happened over the last couple years to create an environment where this ceasefire could take hold. I mean, how do you see the key moments that contributed to that?

MARKS: Well, the IDF has demonstrated over the course of the past two years that they can operate in multiple lines of effort simultaneously, from the strategic level all the way down to the tactical. We have seen the strikes against leadership in Tehran, the strikes against Hamas leadership. Hezbollah is being taken off the table. The return strikes against the Houthis who still remain a challenge to a certain degree, but certainly diluted and decimated to a certain degree.

But the fact that Tehran cannot export terrorism either by way of Hamas or Hezbollah is significant and Israel made that happen. And then the United States gets involved by going after the nuclearization of the military, military capabilities, military nuclear capabilities in Iran, which has been -- that was absolutely unprecedented, again, which is kind of an inflection point of what we haven't seen before, where the United States will decide to get involved but won't necessarily stick around to clean up the mess.

This is, if you break it and you decide to go do something else, we're going to break it again. So all of these conditions that have been taking place over the course of months have set the table for this and clearly, taking both the Sinwar brothers off the table, the decimation of Hamas and the fact that Hamas at this point realized they had very little leverage at all.

And we're seeing these amazingly wonderful, beautiful images of the hostages returning home, albeit juxtaposed to the coffins that are coming back and realizing that of the 250 taken, 230 died. So there has to be some form and it's in the 20-point plan, which is phenomenal, some form of retribution that has to be pushed away and there has to be redemption. If Hamas raises a hand and says, we acknowledge the problems, we want to be a part of the future, there should be safe passage and there should be some form of redemption. That's a guarantee that's being laid down. Again, it needs to take place.

KEILAR: All right, yeah. And we are going to be seeing how that is playing out here in the weeks and months ahead. Major General James "Spider" Marks, thanks for being with us

MARKS: Brianna, thank you very much.

KEILAR: Next, more emotional reunions in Israel. The last time the world saw hostage of Evatar David, this was him emaciated, being forced by Hamas to dig his own grave. Today, he was reunited with his family after more than two years in captivity.

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[14:28:12]

HILL: On this historic day in the Middle East, a celebration understandably. There are also somber moments. This just moments ago, this is the progress of four coffins in a -- in -- now in Israeli possession. They contain the remains of four hostages, a long-awaited and dreaded moment in this war. It's also a reminder that for dozens of families, the remains of their loved ones may never be returned. CNN's Becky Anderson joining us now from Sharm El Sheikh. She is in Egypt where President Trump and other world leaders just signed that ceasefire agreement.

Becky, so much working up to this moment, and now there are questions, of course, about the moments to follow. What more do we know at this point about the details of this deal?

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Well, that is the question of the hour. What is the detail in the document that was signed here in the room that I am now, just less than an hour ago? Signed by the U.S. president, by the Egyptian president, by the leaders of Qatar and Turkey, the guarantors, the mediators of this deal. Alongside, it has to be said, representatives more than 20 countries here, who Donald Trump sees as supporting the end of the war in Gaza and the potential for peace in the Middle East going forward.

So, we are short in detail and that is the issue here, that is the nub because whilst you'd be hard pressed to find anybody who doesn't support the efforts that the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself and his team have made to get this ceasefire deal across the line --