Hamas named the next three Israeli hostages it plans to release this weekend as part of the Gaza ceasefire deal with Israel. It was a sign that the first phase of the truce was moving forward as planned — even as many observers fear that U.S. and Israeli plans to remove all the Palestinians from Gaza have imperiled the deal.

Friday’s announcement came after Hamas accused Israel of overly restricting humanitarian aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip during the ceasefire — items like tents, fuel and equipment to clear debris. There was no immediate response from Israel on Hamas’ allegation that it had broken the terms of the truce deal.

Elsewhere in the region, Iran’s supreme leader said Friday that negotiations with America “are not intelligent, wise or honorable,” after U.S. President Donald Trump suggested he wants nuclear talks with Tehran despite reimposing his “ maximum pressure ” approach. What happens next remains unclear, as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stopped short of issuing a direct order not to engage with Washington.

The Palestinian Authority’s commission of prisoners’ affairs published Friday the names of 183 Palestinian prisoners who will be released from Israeli prisons the following day in exchange for the release of three Israeli men held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.

Of the prisoners, 18 are serving life sentences, 54 have long-term sentences, and 111 are Palestinians from Gaza who were detained after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel. All are men, ranging in age from 20 to 61.

Under the terms of the ongoing six-week truce, Israel agreed to release around 1,000 Gazan detainees on the condition that they were not involved in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Among the most prominent prisoners set to be released is Iyad Abu Shakhdam, 49, who has been imprisoned for nearly 21 years over his involvement in Hamas militant attacks that killed dozens of Israelis in the early 2000s. He is serving 18 life sentences.

Another is Jamal al-Tawil, 61, a Hamas politician and former mayor of the West Bank city of Al-Bireh who has spent nearly two decades in and out of Israeli prison. Since his most-recent arrest in 2021, he’s been held in Israeli administrative detention without trial for allegedly organizing violent riots.

Both will be released Saturday into the occupied West Bank.

That exchange will be the fifth in a multiphase ceasefire deal to halt the fighting in Gaza that Israel and Hamas agreed to last month. The deal calls on Hamas to free at least 33 of the 97 remaining hostages over the first six weeks in exchange for more than 1,500 Palestinians jailed by Israel.

Father of 2 youngest Israeli hostages in Gaza calls for all the captives to be released

JERUSALEM — The father of the two youngest hostages in Gaza, whose plight has become a rallying cry for Israelis, said Friday that “everything here is dark” without his family members at home.

Yarden Bibas was released in the last hostage exchange. Israel has expressed grave concern for his family and Hamas says they were killed in an Israeli airstrike — a claim Israel has not confirmed.

Friday’s statement from Bibas, 35, came shortly after the news that Hamas named three more adult Israeli hostages to be freed Saturday.

“My family hasn’t returned to me yet. They are still there,” wrote Bibas, who was released in the last exchange. His young boys, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and wife, Shiri Bibas, remain in Gaza. “My light is still there, and as long as they’re there, everything here is dark.”

Bibas thanked the Israeli public and the military for supporting him, then spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directly.

“I’m now addressing you with my own words, which no one dictated to me: Bring my family back,” he wrote. “Bring my friends back. Bring everyone home.”

Trump calls his Gaza proposal a simple ‘real estate transaction’

U.S. President Donald Trump says his suggestions that Gaza’s residents could be resettled and the area redeveloped for tourism potential has “been very well received” around the globe.

The idea has actually been roundly criticized. But Trump insisted Friday that it was a simple “real estate transaction,” and that the U.S. is in “no rush to do anything.”

The president has suggested resettlement of Gaza’s residents could be permanent — something that even top members of his own administration have refuted.

But Trump said that, “We don’t want to see everybody move back and then move out in 10 years” because of continued unrest.

The leaders of Lebanon and Syria seek to calm border clashes

BEIRUT — Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa discussed fighting that has broken out on the border between the two countries Friday “and agreed to coordinate to control the situation and prevent targeting civilians,” Aoun’s office said in a statement.

Clashes have been ongoing for two days between Syrian security forces and Lebanese clans in the border area.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported that “a number of dead and wounded” had fallen in gunbattles near the Lebanese city of Hermel – on Lebanon’s far eastern border – and said that Syrian militants had tried to enter Lebanese villages.

It was unclear what militant groups the report was referring to. Syria’s new government is run by former Islamist rebels, and many members of the security forces are likely drawn from the ex-insurgents’ ranks.

On Thursday, two members of Syria’s border security force were “kidnapped by a group of wanted people involved in smuggling weapons and contraband,” according to Syria’s state-run SANA news agency, although they were freed later the same day.