English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Portuguese
Russian
Chinese (Simplified)
Hindi
Japanese
WASHINGTON — President Trump celebrated the looming return of 20 Israeli hostages Thursday after helping broker a landmark cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.
“The first thing that we’re doing is getting our hostages back. And that’s what people wanted more than anything else,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting — as he outlined plans to travel to Egypt Sunday for an in-person signing event followed by a speech to the Israeli Knesset on a “day of great celebration.”
“After that, we’ll see, but they have agreed to things and I think it’s going to move along pretty well,” Trump said of the major diplomatic achievement.
The president’s top advisers took turns applauding the commander in chief and crediting him with ending two years of carnage that began with Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Very soon, we’re going to see 20 living human beings emerge from the darkness into the light for the first time in two years,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said that many of Trump’s behind-the-scenes moves to reach a deal may never be known.
“Our country should be very proud we have a president who’s committed to not just peace, but to the human aspect of uniting these families,” Rubio told Trump.
Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, noted the role of Trump’s close friend and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner — with Vance saying the team defied significant media skepticism to reach the initial deal during talks in Egypt.
When a journalist asked Trump to identify the contours of phase two, however, the president said, “I’m not going to talk about that because you sort of know what phase two is. But there will be disarming, there will be pullbacks, there will be a lot of things that are happening.”
Trump’s 20-point peace proposal, which Hamas tentatively accepted Oct. 3, calls for a three-stage pullback of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip’s urban core and for “Arab and international partners to develop a temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF) to immediately deploy in Gaza.”
The president said that the composition of the international deployment was “to be determined.”
“I gave you a whole list of 22 [sic] different things that will take place, and I think it will take place. and I think you’re going to end up with peace in the Middle East,” Trump said of the second phase.
The president repeated that the focus was on “getting the hostages out, but the rest is going to take place too.”
The plan states that “no one will be forced to leave Gaza, and those who wish to leave will be free to do so and free to return.”
“Nobody’s going to be forced to leave,” Trump reiterated during an afternoon event with Finnish President Alexander Stubb.
Earlier in the year, Trump proposed relocating Gaza’s inhabitants to make way for a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East,” but the peace blueprint instead proposes a “special economic zone” in Gaza and a transitional government overseen by a Trump-chaired Board of Peace.
The president said that Gaza’s future will be buoyed by wealthy Arab neighbors set to finance an ambitious economic development plan for the roughly 2 million-person region.
“We are going to work with very wealthy countries that love people, frankly. I know them very well, they love people, but they love Arab people and they love Muslims, but I think right now they love everybody,” Trump said during the cabinet meeting.
“They are immensely wealthy and they’re going to be involved in putting up money. and for them it’s a small amount of money. For somebody else it’s a large amount of money, but these are the wealthiest countries in the world and they will be very much involved in making it as good as possible.”
Trump said his June 21 airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear program were “very important” due to the fact that Hamas-allied Tehran would have cast a “dark cloud” over peace talks.
“Iran wants to work on peace now, they’ve informed us. And they’ve acknowledged that they’re totally in favor of this deal,” Trump said. “We have major sanctions on Iran and a lot of other things and we would like to see them be able to rebuild their country too.”
Trump trumpeted the Gaza plan one day ahead of the announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize winner on Friday morning.
“I don’t know what they’re going to do, really,” Trump said when asked about the award during an afternoon Oval Office event. “Whatever they do is fine. I know this: I didn’t do it for that. I did it because I saved a lot of lives.”
