Donald Trump has said he may travel to the Middle East at the end of the week, adding that negotiations in Egypt to end the two-year war in Gaza were “very close” to reaching a deal.The US president said that he could visit the region on Saturday or Sunday as he hailed talks that could bring “peace for the Middle East”.“It’s very close, they’re doing very well,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday evening. “It’s something I think will happen, has a good chance of happening … There is a very good chance, negotiations are going very well.”During a White House roundtable, secretary of state Marco Rubio handed the president a handwritten note with the words “very close” underlined.“You need to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first,” read the hand-scrawled note on White House stationery. After reading the message, the text of which was captured by an Associated Press photographer, Trump told reporters: “I was just given a note by the secretary of state saying that we’re very close to a deal in the Middle East, and they’re going to need me pretty quickly.”White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later said in a statement that was “considering” travel to the Middle East after a visit to Walter Reed hospital in Washington DC on Friday morning.Marco Rubio writes a note before handing it to Donald Trump on Wednesday. Photograph: Evan Vucci/APEarlier, US, Qatari and Turkish officials arrived in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for the third day of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas. The US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, were joined by the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, and the head of Turkish intelligence, Ibrahim Kalin.The presence of the senior officials from the three countries brought further hope that this round of talks could result in a deal, even as significant gaps remained between the two sides.“Good progress has been made today,” the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told reporters in Washington DC. “Events are moving in a good direction, but there’s still some work to be done.”Hamas has said that it is seeking international guarantees that Israel will not resume bombing Gaza after the group releases all the remaining hostages, living and dead, that it captured on 7 October 2023 – its main leverage over Israel.In mid-March, Israel unilaterally ended a ceasefire when it resumed fighting in Gaza and declined to move to a second stage of talks that would have led to an end to the war.In an interview with Egyptian TV on Wednesday, the leader of the Palestinian negotiating delegation and senior Hamas official, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group needed firm guarantees from Trump that the war “will not return”.Though Hamas has agreed to three parts of Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza – namely the release of all hostages in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, surrendering power in the strip and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza – the rest of the deal still needs to be discussed.An Egyptian woman watches footage of the US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh for talks. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty ImagesAmong the points that still need to be negotiated are the demands that Hamas disarm, how and when Israeli troops withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and the makeup of an international technocratic body that is meant to govern Gaza.Logistics of a hostage-prisoner swap still need to be ironed out. Hamas had given mediators a list of Palestinian prisoners it wants to see released from Israeli prisons, said Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas official.Rightwing members of the Israeli government have put pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, not to allow the release of certain prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti, who has frequently been touted as a future Palestinian political leader, according to Israeli media.The far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that Netanyahu should seek “complete victory” over Hamas in Gaza, in remarks he made while praying at al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem – a disputed area that contains Islam’s third-holiest site and is Judaism’s holiest place – on Wednesday. Hamas called his visit a “deliberate provocation”.Joining the talks are militant groups allied to Hamas including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which holds some Israeli hostages as Hamas tries to present a unified Palestinian front.