1 of 2 | Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press conference at the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center in southern Israel Tuesday. Photo by Abir Sultan/EPA
Vice President JD Vance gave a press conference Tuesday in Israel in which he said the peace is “durable” and that if it falls apart, Hamas will be “obliterated.”
Vance arrived for the two-day visit to Israel on Tuesday to head up efforts by President Donald Trump to bolster the cease-fire agreement with Hamas that has been coming under increasing strain amid apparent violations of the deal.
Vance’s presence was aimed at warning both parties not to sabotage the truce, which was based on Trump’s 20-point peace plan and which he leaned hard on all sides, including allies in the region, to buy into, analysts told The New York Times.
The press conference about the U.S.-brokered peace plan between Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza, included Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, investor Jared Kushner and Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the U.S. Central Command.
The Americans and their Arab allies want to deliver all the elements for a permanent peace, including Hamas disarmament, replacing Israeli forces in Gaza with a multinational security stabilization force and establishing an independent Palestinian administration.
Vance is tasked with pushing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to begin negotiations on those issues to ensure the decades-long conflict with Hamas is consigned to history.
Vance, answering a question about Hamas’ role in the cease-fire, said “It’s that Hamas has to disarm, it’s that Hamas has to actually behave itself, and that Hamas — while all the fighters can be given some sort of clemency — they’re not going to be able to kill each other, and they’re not going to be able to kill their fellow Palestinians.” He also referred to Hamas as a “terrorist organization.”
“I feel confident that we’re going to be in a place where this peace lasts, where it’s durable,” he said. “If Hamas doesn’t cooperate, then as the president of the United States has said, Hamas is going to be obliterated.”
The four spoke from the new Civilian-Military Cooperation Center in Israel, which Vance said is central to keeping the cease-fire agreement going.
“You have Israelis and Americans working hand-in-hand to try to begin the plan to rebuild Gaza, to implement a long-term peace and to actually ensure that you have security forces on the ground in Gaza — not composed of Americans — who can keep the peace over the long term,” Vance said of the center.
Kushner discussed the plans to rebuild Gaza.
“No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” he said.
But the reconstruction would “give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” Kushner said. Details of those plans are still unclear.
Vance also lamented a “weird attitude” in American media, “where there’s almost this desire to root for failure that every time something bad happens that every time that there’s an act of violence there’s this inclination to say, ‘Oh this is the end of the cease-fire. This is the end of the peace plan.’ It’s not the end. It is, in fact, exactly how this is going to have to happen.”
Kushner reiterated the challenges of keeping the peace.
“A lot of people are getting a little hysterical about different incursions one way or the other, but what we are seeing is that things are going in accordance, both sides are transitioning from two years of very intense warfare to now a peacetime posture,” Kushner said.
Vance also advised patience in the wait for the bodies of dead hostages.
“It is a focus of everybody here to get those bodies back home to their families so that they can have a proper burial,” he said. But, “this is not going to happen overnight. Some of these hostages are buried under thousands of pounds of rubble. Some of the hostages, nobody even knows where they are. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to get them, and that doesn’t mean we don’t have confidence that we will. It’s just a reason to counsel in favor of a little bit of patience.”
Witkoff said the CMCC will be used in the future to moderate future conflicts of other nations.
Witkoff and Kushner, who were central in getting the Oct. 13 deal over the line in partnership with Qatar and Egypt, arrived Monday for meetings with senior Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, to advance the process beyond the initial first phase.
NOW: Vice President @JDVance and Second Lady Usha Vance arrive at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel pic.twitter.com/w7EF9QhLDW— William Martin (@VPCommsDir) October 21, 2025
Administration officials were said to be concerned about Netanyahu’s commitment going forward and that he may be planning to back out and resume a full-scale offensive against Hamas amid problems with hostage returns and flare-ups in the violence.
In a speech in the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday, he brushed over his upcoming summit with Vance and boasted of Israel’s military prowess.
“We will talk about two things, mainly the security challenges and the diplomatic opportunities we face. We will overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities,” Netanyahu said.
He told lawmakers how Israeli forces had dropped 153 tons of ordnance on Gaza on Sunday in retaliation for what he said was a “blatant” cease-fire violation by Hamas that killed two soldiers in Rafah after they were targeted with “anti-tank missiles and gunfire.”
Hamas has denied any involvement in the incident.
“One of our hands holds a weapon; the other hand is stretched out for peace,” he said. “You make peace with the strong, not the weak. Today, Israel is stronger than ever before,” Netanyahu said.
