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The Situation Room

All Living Hostages Freed After Two Years of Hamas Captivity; Soon, Trump Arrives in Egypt for Gaza Summit; Trump Calls on Israel's President to Pardon Netanyahu. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 13, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, finally freed. After more than two years in captivity and Gaza, all of the remaining hostages are now free and reunited with their family.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: So exciting, so emotional here in Israel.

We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Tel Aviv, Pamela Brown is in Washington, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with major breaking news. After two years of war and captivity, the last living hostages of Hamas are now back home with their loved ones here in Israel.

Overnight, Hamas released all 20 of the surviving Israeli hostages. Israel, in exchange, is releasing nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. President Trump appeared before Israel's parliament, the Knesset, to celebrate the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today, the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And this historic day continues to unfold. President Trump is joining world leaders from more than 20 countries right now for a summit on the future of Gaza. That gathering is taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Wolf?

BLITZER: It's going to be a very significant summit indeed.

My colleague and friend, Kaitlan Collins, is here with me in Tel Aviv right now. Kaitlan, what, it's just after 5:00 P.M. here in Israel, this has been part of a really fast-moving development all day, very emotional, very exciting, the president delivering a huge speech before the Knesset. KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And here way longer than he had planned to be. He was only expected to be here for a few hours on the ground, Wolf. And then obviously that was extended as we saw those lengthy speeches happening in inside the Knesset with the president speaking last after Prime Minister Netanyahu and the opposition leader and the speaker of the Knesset.

But in President Trump's remarks, he laid out a very optimistic and bullish view of not just for Israel but the entire Middle East of what this is looking like. He called it a new dawn for the Middle East, is something that he has been pushing and so have his allies here, including Steve Witkoff, who is here and helped broker that agreement.

I want people to listen to part of what the president said in his speech, Wolf, about what that future for the Middle East could look like.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: And as the dust settles, the smoke fades, the debris is removed, and the ashes clean from the air, the day that breaks on a region transformed and a beautiful and much brighter future appears suddenly within your reach. This is now a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East. Because all across the Middle East, the forces of chaos, terror, and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated, and totally defeated. A new coalition of proud and responsible nations is emerging.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: You heard him talking about that new coalition.

Obviously, he's on the way to Egypt to meet -- he'll land there about ten minutes where he is going to meet with all of these other Arab and Muslim leaders.

One thing he went out of his way, Wolf, in that speech to do was to praise them for their efforts here and their help in getting to this moment with the ceasefire agreement. That's not always something you hear from President Trump in his speeches. And so it was a moment that certainly stood out as he's ready to go to the table in Egypt and sit down for this formal signing ceremony.

But he's made clear he wants this to continue. He wants to expand the Abraham of Accords, which started in his first term in office, something that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a key broker on. And so, obviously, just hearing the president there, basically saying that he believes this war is settled and done. We haven't yet heard that from the prime minister himself, but the president said it twice today as he was here in Israel.

[10:05:03]

BLITZER: And as you point out, he made it clear he thinks bigger and better and even more effusive peace arrangements are possible. COLLINS: Yes, including with Saudi Arabia. That is one that the president has long sought, obviously was something that he wanted to happen before October 7th happened. But also he's made clear he thinks it could go beyond that he was making overtures to Iran, and also saying he didn't think that they'd get to this moment had the U.S. not conducted those strikes on Iran in recent months.

And so all of this, you know, the president laying out that foreign policy view, the question is whether it aligns with the other world leaders that he's about to sit down with.

BLITZER: Kaitlan, I want you to stand by. Don't go too far away. The -- I want to also at least share part of this speech by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Who spoke just before the president. He was truly effusive, praising President Trump for his support for Israel. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: My friends, this is only a partial list, but it's enough to affirm what I've said time and again. Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Pretty remarkable praise in front of Israel's parliament over there. But this is what he truly believes.

WOLLINS: Well, I mean, he was -- I mean, it also benefits him, Wolf, to align himself closely with President Trump. President Trump is more popular here than he is. We've heard all these hostages praising Trump, cheering Trump's name, booing Netanyahu's name in Hostages Square, where you saw Clarissa Ward reporting from earlier. And so, obviously, there's a political calculus certainly at play here.

But then President Trump got up and similarly praised Netanyahu, was lavishing it on him as well, calling him a great leader, saying he's not always easy to deal with, but he said that that's why he believes he is a great leader. And then, obviously, that remarkable moment where he turned to the Israeli president and called on him to pardon Prime Minister Netanyahu for that corruption trial that he's facing and hearings that he's been fighting for many years now. But that stunning moment where the Israeli president just kind of laughed a little and had a smile on his face, but obviously seemed to be something that President Trump was pretty serious about.

BLITZER: Yes. President Herzog certainly did not expect to hear that from the president of the United States.

COLLINS: And Trump said it wasn't in the prepared speech.

BLITZER: Yes.

COLLINS: Which I think was pretty obvious, everyone was watching.

BLITZER: All right. Kaitlan, excellent work. Thank you very, very much.

We're watching a lot of key developments right now. The president is right now on his to Egypt, to Sharm El-Sheikh, where this summit of some 30 world leaders is about to convene and they will be discussing the future of Gaza. Indeed, the future of the region as a whole. After these two years of warfare, the devastating war, the challenges that just ahead clearly are enormous right now.

I want to bring in CNN's Nic Robertson. He's our international diplomatic editor. He is on the scene for us in Sharm El-Sheikh. That's where these are taking place.

It's going to be an amazing meeting, very significant. We'll be watching it very closely with Nic. Set the scene for us.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. President Trump joked about, he wondered if by the time he got there running more than three hours late, that the leaders would actually be waiting for him. But, interestingly, the leaders have been using the time, it appears, the good advantage and having a lot of bilateral meetings on the margins here. And, of course, it all is focused on how to get to the implementation of President Trump's 20-point peace plan, things like the stabilization force inside of Gaza, how big should it be, who should be on it, who should pay for it, what mandate does it have, should it have the backing of the U.N.

We've got a window into just some of the bilaterals here from Downing Street. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was one of the first to arrive in here. He's had a meeting with Emmanuel Macron that both paid tribute to the intermediaries, the negotiators to Qatar, to Egypt, to Turkey. Starmer also had a meeting with the Qatari emir. He's also had a meeting with the Turkish president, Erdogan. And in that meeting, they both talked about the sort of top issue here, taking the momentum of phase one and turning into momentum for phase two.

But, actually, one of the sort of interesting little windows into the back scenes of what's going on, we also heard in a communication from Downing Street quoting what they'd heard from and been told by Steve Witkoff, Steve Witkoff praising a man called Jonathan Powell. Now, here's a name our audience may not be so familiar with. He is the national security adviser for Keir Starmer. But perhaps more significantly, he was the chief of staff to Tony Blair, Tony Blair, who's going to take up a prime role on the peace board, for the future governance and establishing that in Gaza and what happens inside of Gaza. Jonathan Powell was Tony Blair's chief of Staff during the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland in 1998.

And when we read through President Trump's 20-point plan about weapons, what to happen to weapons.

[10:10:03]

A new word sort of floated to the foreground there. The -- putting the weapons beyond use rather than Hamas destroying their weapons, handing them over to Israel or somebody else, decommissioning the weapons. Now, that was language that Jonathan Powell used extensively during the Good Friday Peace process. So, you can see a sort of an uptick here from Blair, from Powell for the language that could be used going forward. And that's something Witkoff point -- thanking Jonathan Powell is something that Steve Witkoff did. That stuck out to me. Of course, there's a lot else going on behind the scenes as well, Wolf.

BLITZER: Lots going on behind the scenes. This is a meeting, this summit in Sharm El-Sheikh, Nic, where you are, is going to be potentially, potentially, very, very significant. You'll be busy. We'll stay in very close touch with you.

Nic Robertson on the scene for us in Sharm El-Sheikh, thank you very, very much.

This has been a day filled with truly incredible moments including the story of this man, Matan Zangauker, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th, two years ago. And today, his mother was able to call him, telling him the war was over, at least from her standpoint, and that he was finally coming home. Watch and listen.

And then after more than two years apart, the mother and son were finally reunited.

Truly an incredible moment and very, very emotional, and this has been going on here in Israel all day as some of the hostages who have now been released are meeting finally after two years with their families.

Our breaking news coverage will continue, lots more coming up right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:00]

BLITZER: Breaking news, President Trump is expected to arrive in Egypt for that Gaza summit with world leaders very, very soon. Within minutes he could be arriving. This after the president made a rather historic visit here to Israel for the release of all 20 living Israeli hostages released by Hamas on this important day.

And joining us now from Jerusalem is The New York Times White House and national security correspondent David Sanger. David, thanks so much for joining us. David's also a CNN political and national security analyst.

I want to get your assessment of the fact that the president keeps saying the war is over, the prime minister of Israel isn't ready to say that yet. He says there's a ceasefire, but the war necessarily is not over. What do you make of that?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, I think, Wolf, in this incredibly, you know, emotional day what you have to make of it is that the president decided to take an initial agreement by Hamas to release the hostages, what we saw play out today so ethically and so emotionally, and to take that as a much larger solution to the war than I think the prime minister has in mind. And so the president repeatedly said, the war is over as far as I'm concerned, and the Prime Minister simply said, we've gone through the first phase.

And, of course, the next phase is the hardest, which is getting Hamas to disarm and give up its hopes of ruling over Gaza, and that means doing the hard work of having another government in place and stabilization force that will enforce all this. And there was very little discussion of that in the president's speech.

BLITZER: We also saw, David, Prime Minister Netanyahu heap extraordinary praise on President Trump, calling him at one point Israel's, quote, greatest friend ever in the White House. Tell us why that's so significant.

SANGER: Well, clearly, he went through the list of things that President Trump had done for Israel just in this time. He went through the Abraham Accords from the first term, which were Arab states that recognized Israel. Then he discussed the help that they gave them in defending against Iranian attacks, in providing the weapons for the war in Gaza, intelligence help in dealing with Hezbollah, and then, of course, taking Iran's nuclear program.

[10:20:07]

That's why you heard them say, not once, but twice, that they were nominating President Trump for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. Obviously, one was just awarded on Friday.

But this was also a little bit self-interested because what they're trying to do is bring the president completely in their corner. And they know that we have hard days ahead, particularly if Israel decides that it is still threatened by an armed Hamas and decides to reopen hostilities.

BLITZER: Yes, there's still lots of questions that are unfolding. And we did hear Prime Minister Netanyahu say that he would nominate President Trump for the Israel prize, which is the highest award, the highest honor here in Israel that he suggests would go to President Trump because of support. And he also cited. In the first term of Trump the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and also to acknowledge, to recognize that the Golan Heights, which used to be part of Syria, are now under Israeli sovereignty, and the U.S. accepts that. That got huge applause from the crowd there in the Knesset as he was citing the various pro-Israel moves that President Trump has made over these past several years.

You wrote a piece in The New York Times detailing how the Trump administration got to this point after months and months of frustration and stalemate. Why now? Why do you think it happened now?

SANGER: Well, a couple of things came together. I think the first thing that came together was that Hamas was exhausted and running out of ammunition. I think the second thing that came together is that the prime minister overreached when he attacked the Hamas contingent in Qatar. And that so angered President Trump that he made president -- Prime Minister Netanyahu, during a visit to Washington two weeks ago, apologize to the leaders of Qatar, and then sign on to this 20-point plan.

And so for the first time, he really twisted the arm of the prime minister. And today you heard him acknowledge it, well, he's not easy to work with, he said, in a kind of, you know, loving kind of way. But the fact of the matter is there had been significant behind the scenes clashes because Netanyahu wanted fundamentally to not only a hunt down Hamas but take over control of all of Gaza. And he didn't get all of that.

So, I think the question now is, does President Trump stick with this and work toward the rebuilding of Gaza, which is going to be a huge international project. And that's really what this summit meeting that he's flying into now in Sharm El-Sheikh is all about.

BLITZER: Yes, good point. What do you expect, David, will come next for the United States relationship with Israel as President Trump and other world leaders, including leaders from several key Arab states, are working to secure and rebuild Gaza at this peace summit that's about to take place in Egypt, at Sharm El-Sheikh.

SANGER: Well, the first question is, how much money and how many troops do these countries contribute? The U.S. has already said it will put 200 forces that are already here outside of Gaza, but not inside to help coordinate this. The second is, can you get aid and a comprehensive plan for rebuilding the country or rebuilding the territory, Gaza? And that's going to be a huge effort as you've just seen from the photographs of the scope of destruction. And, third, what does that look like? Is it a plan to build hotels and, you know, turn this into a (INAUDIBLE) that looks kind of like Miami Beach, or is it something to put housing in place for Palestinians who have nothing?

And you did not hear the president discuss that in any detail. He went on for more than an hour in his speech, talked about Steve Witkoff, talked about President Putin, told stories, but he did not get to the hard decisions ahead.

BLITZER: Interesting, very interesting. David Sanger, thank you very, very much.

And this just coming in, President Trump is now arriving in Egypt.

I want to go live to our CNN International Diplomatic Editor Nick Robertson, who's on the scene for us in Sharm El-Sheikh. What are you seeing? What are you hearing, Nic?

[10:25:00]

ROBERTSON: Yes, Wolf. The second phase of President Trump's trip, and the second phase of trying to turn a ceasefire into an enduring piece.

Interestingly, just before the president's plane came into land, I'd say about five or six minutes prior, we heard the whoosh of fighter jets flying overhead. We are very close to the airport here in Sharm El- Sheikh. There were about four or five fighter jets, supposing that they were Egyptian fighter jets. And this was kind of a, an Egyptian welcome a show of strength, clearing the air, if you will, before President Trump came in.

So, the leaders here have been waiting for him, longer than they expected, three and a half hours late coming in, but they have had time to talk amongst themselves reaffirming the points they've been making, take the momentum of phase one. What we can expect them to do is lavish praise on President Trump for the reason that they want to keep him engaged in this process, that they want to use the momentum of success in phase one to bring about phase two. But they will be perhaps expanding and explaining some of their ideas of the way forward.

But key to all of this is hearing more about what President Trump has to say about, let's say, the stabilization force that will go into Gaza. How big, who's in it, who pays for it, but critically, what mandate does it have? Does it have a backing from the U.N.? A mandate for the any country that's sending their troops in is absolutely critical because everyone's aware that the situation there could turn hostile.

One of the things they're expected to do is to get Hamas to disarm. What happens if they don't? Does Hamas start shooting at this international stabilization force? What mandate do they have? Fire if fired at, fire if you think you might be fired at? There are many, many details that, that are expected of these international forces to conform with the international laws of war.

So, you see even on that segment of how do you provide for what's expected to roll out in this peace plan, you have to nail down those details. And they're very potentially difficult to nail down. Israel has a very high expectation that this stabilization force will be at the forefront of disarming Hamas. And Israel has said if they believe that Hamas is re-arming, re-equipping, becoming a force that could that could destroy the peace in Israel, then they're going to feel compelled to strike. This is the tightrope. This is the balance that has to be struck. We may get more details on all of that.

But what is absolutely critical is the speed to get that stabilization force in. Not just to convince Palestinians in Gaza that there is a prospect of a better life in the future, but what -- but to make sure that Hamas, if you will, doesn't take strong root again, although they seem to be behind the curve on that.

And I think the other thing to just say, how tough the detail is, but what do you do on reconstruction? Everyone knows you're going to want to rebuild the houses, you're going to want to get the money to do that, but what do you do first? You put tarmac on the roads, or do you repair the sewers underneath and run the power lines again and put in the phone communications and all of those details? How do you do it? Do you do it south to north? Do you do it everywhere? Who gets a home first? Which part of Gaza has dibs on getting the first of the humanitarian aid? All of that, expectations are going to be very high in Gaza. Delivering on those expectations is going to be one of the biggest challenges going forward.

So, what we hear today may give us some oversight, some view of how this could potentially roll out. Wolf?

BLITZER: A very, very important meeting about to take place in Sharm El-Sheikh, where you are, Nic. I want you to stand by. You're going to be a busy guy, as I say.

Kaitlan Collins, our anchor and chief White House correspondent, is with us as well. There's going to be some NATO ally leaders. There's going to be some major Arab leaders there in Sharm El-Sheikh. This is going to be a very important meeting for the president of the United States.

COLLINS: And, you know, Wolf, have to think just a few weeks ago when Israel launched that strike on sovereign Qatari territory, angering them so much, saying they didn't get enough of a heads from the White House, the White House not really saying how much of a heads up they got from Israel about that, it's hard to think about that moment just happening a few weeks ago. And then now here we are, they're all gathering in each Egypt to have the formal signing ceremony for this agreement, this peace agreement, as the president has proposed it, and also all 20 points of it, as Nic was pointing out there, how they actually get to that and get to those thorny and difficult details that certainly lie ahead.

But I think what you've seen from the president today, as he's been focused on this and the incredibly warm reception that he got here in Israel and a speech before the Israeli parliament that felt like it could have gone on for hours, Wolf, it went on for more than one hour, is the president is relishing this moment and using this.

[10:30:07]