A triumphant and supremely confident President Donald Trump has declared an end to the brutal two-year war in Gaza, a bold and perhaps premature proclamation delivered from the cabin of Air Force One as he embarked on a high-stakes peace tour of the Middle East.
The lightning trip, a carefully orchestrated mix of victory lap and high-pressure diplomacy, will see the president attempt to cement a fragile and deeply complex peace deal that now rests on a series of precarious “verbal guarantees.”
‘The war is over. okay?’
Speaking to reporters at the start of his “very special” visit, the 79-year-old president brushed off any suggestion that the ceasefire and hostage-release deal he helped broker was in jeopardy.
“The war is over. Okay? You understand that?” Trump told reporters as quoted by AFP when asked if he was confident the conflict was truly finished. Asked if the ceasefire would hold, he was equally resolute: “I think it’s going to hold. I think people are tired of it. It’s been centuries.”
The visit is a moment of deep personal and political significance for the two-term president.
In Israel, he is scheduled to meet with the families of the hostages seized by Hamas in its October 7, 2023 attack, a moment of profound emotional weight, before delivering a historic address to the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem.
From there, he will fly to Egypt to co-host a major summit of more than 20 world leaders, a powerful gathering designed to build a broad base of international support for his 20-point plan to end the Gaza war and promote a wider and more durable peace in the region.
A peace built on ‘verbal guarantees’
But even as the president basks in the glow of a major diplomatic achievement, the path forward is fraught with peril.
The initial phase of the deal may be signed, but huge and fundamental uncertainties remain, most notably Hamas’s refusal to disarm and Israel’s failure to pledge a full withdrawal from the devastated territory.
Trump, however, insists he has the personal assurances he needs to see the deal through.
“We have a lot of verbal guarantees, and I don’t think they’re going to want to disappoint me,” he said, placing his own personal credibility and relationships at the very heart of the fragile peace.
He acknowledged that his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been tested but was now “very good,” adding: “I had some disputes with him and they were quickly settled.”
In a sign of his deep personal investment in the outcome, Trump even stated he would eventually like to visit Gaza itself, a security challenge of monumental proportions. “I would be proud to,” Trump said. “I’d like to put my feet on it at least.”
As for the future governance of the devastated strip, which under his own plan he himself would head, Trump declared a new body would be established “very quickly.”
The world now watches, and waits, to see if the sheer force of a president’s will can transform a fragile truce into a lasting peace.
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