Welcome to meet the press now. I'm Kristen Welker in Washington, where we are continuing to follow that breaking news out of the Middle East, where Hamas says it has agreed to release all Israeli hostages, both alive and dead, and that it will commit to relinquish its control of the Gaza Strip, a significant development.

The agreement is in response to President Trump's

proposal to end the Israel-Hamas war, which he outlined earlier this week. The president also

warned earlier today that Hamas had to agree to his proposal by Sunday, threatening, quote,

all hell like no one has ever seen before will break out against Hamas. In its statement,

Hamas said it will accept some elements ofas. In its statement, Hamas said it will

accept some elements of Mr. Trump's plan, but other parts need more negotiations. NBC's Monica

Alba is at the White House. Also in a moment will be joined with Ambassador Dennis Ross for

a mid-east envoy and an NBC News Foreign Affairs analyst, and NBC's Richard Engel, who is in Jerusalem.

Monica, let me turn to you first.

This is a significant development several days ago.

President Trump had signaled that this might be the case,

that he was getting closer to a deal.

And now we have this very big piece of news coming out of the Middle East, Monica.

What do you make of it? And how did it come about?

Certainly significant, Kristen, if this does end up leading to what certainly President Trump hopes it ends up leading to.

And I was just talking to senior White House officials here who were aware of this statement but didn't necessarily

have a response for us. Yes, I think because of how lengthy it was in nature and as complex

as it is with all of these different elements, some of which it does seem, Hamas says they are

on board with and agreeing to and others of which they have not completely endorsed.

And it is very important to point out that in this, Hamas is saying they're willing to

negotiate potentially on some of the key sticking points.

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