“Well, it’s been a great period of time for Israel and the Middle East, and I’ll be going there probably on Sunday, Sunday evening,” Trump said in a brief phone conversation hours after announcing the “first phase” agreement between the Jewish state and the Islamic terror group.
“And I think that you will see some tremendous things happen next week. It’s been an amazing period of time. The whole world has come together, but the Middle East has come together for the first time in 3,000 years.”
Roughly 20 living Israeli hostages are expected to be released on Monday, a senior US official told The Post on Wednesday, with the remains of another 28 who died during two years in captivity to be handed over later.
The president’s 20-point peace plan to end the Gaza War, to which Hamas tentatively agreed to Oct. 3, calls for Israel to release 250 Palestinians with life sentences “plus 1,700 Gazans who were detained after October 7, 2023.”
“Once all hostages are returned, Hamas members who commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons will be given amnesty,” Trump’s peace blueprint says. “Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.”
Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon that he expects to go to Egypt, where peace talks are being hosted at the Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, but would also be “making the rounds” and may even stop in the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, has invited Trump to address the Israeli Knesset.
The president’s precise itinerary was unclear as of Thursday morning.
Trump has framed the cessation of fighting as bringing peace to the region as a whole — after his first-term diplomatic push established between Israel and four Arab countries, a list which he has attempted to broaden to include Saudi Arabia and Syria in his second term.
The Trump plan specifies three rounds of Israeli troop pullbacks away from Gaza’s heavily populated coastal areas, with the first due to occur in conjunction with the initial hostage release.
Key sticking points in the roadmap — such as international troop contributions to a Gaza peacekeeping force and members of a proposed “technocratic, apolitical” interim government with no Hamas involvement — remain undetermined.
The transitional government would be overseen by a Board of Peace chaired by Trump, with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as a member.
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The transitional government would be overseen by a Board of Peace chaired by Trump, with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair as a member.
The roadmap, which calls for no forced relocation of residents, has followed a year of dramatic threats and inducements, with Trump at one point floating clearing out the beachfront territory and turning it into a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump’s breakthrough came roughly 36 hours before the Friday morning announcement of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — an award that prominent Republicans and many of his foreign allies have clamored for him to win.
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