US Senator Lindsey Graham: 'President-elect Trump wants hostage release deal before inauguration'

President-elect Donald Trump wants a hostage release-ceasefire deal before his inauguration on January 20, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–South Carolina) said on Friday.

Graham made these statements in an exclusive interview conducted by Axios after the senator returned from Israel, where he was quoted saying that “Trump is more determined than ever to release the hostages and supports a ceasefire that includes a hostage deal. He wants to see it happening now.

“I want people in Israel and in the region to know that Trump is focused on the hostages issue,” he said. “He wants the killing to stop and the fighting to end.”

Graham also noted in the interview his hope that both Trump and the Biden administration will work during the transition period to get a ceasefire and hostage release deal and that the current US president will continue pushing for a deal until his final day in the White House.

The Axios report also noted Israeli officials’ belief and preparedness of the incoming Trump administration’s approach to the war in Gaza and that it may differ from Biden’s and what the “day after” the war would look like.

Graham, regardless, still critical of some Israeli officials

The senator noted that the president-elect would need a deal to end the war in the Palestinian enclave before developing key foreign policy objectives in the Middle East.

Graham, however, took a firm stance in the interview against statements made by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich when he entertained the idea of “encouraging voluntary immigration” from Gaza to decrease its Palestinian population now that the Trump administration is incoming, the report noted.

He later said about Smotrich that “he should talk to Trump and hear what he wants. If you haven’t spoken to him, I wouldn’t put words in his mouth.”

He also told Axios that “Israeli reoccupation” of the Gaza Strip was not the way to dismantle Hamas, but rather introducing major reforms into Palestinian society that would prevent it or other extremist terrorist groups from emerging was the right way.

“The only ones who can do that are the Arab countries,” he elaborated.

Graham also met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the past month. He noted that one of Trump’s major foreign policy positions would be to endorse Israel-Saudi normalization but noted that such a deal, in his opinion, must include a “Palestinian component.”