President Donald Trump. BBC/Getty.
All remaining living Hamas hostages have been released as Trump signs a peace declaration in Egypt. BBC. Israel released roughly 1000 prisoners in exchange for the last 20 remaining living hostages that Hamas took during the October 7th attack. Trump signed a peace declaration in Egypt along with 20 other world leaders, and received the Order of the Nile from Egyptian President al-Sisi. President Trump said that the 2nd phase of negotiations are ongoing. Trump had also visited Israel earlier in the day and received praise there as well. Trump said that the cease-fire would hold and his next challenge would be ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
My Comment:
Even if the peace deal does fall apart, Trump deserves a huge amount of credit for ending the hostage situation in the Gaza stip. The last 20 living hostages are now back home after two years of captivity. There are still some bodies that have to be returned, but supposedly that will take longer as many of them have been lost by Hamas.
I do think that the cease-fire will hold, at least in the short term. The war may flare up in a few years, but for now I think the fighting will be done. Well, not all the fighting. From what I understand there is a bit of violence in Gaza right now as various factions are using the lull in fighting to settle old scores and position themselves for the post-war era.
So why will it hold? I am guessing on the Israeli side Netanyahu is under immense pressure to keep the war ended, and not just from President Trump. His own people were growing tired of the war, outside of a few hardliners. But with Trump's pressure and real desire for peace, I can't see Netanyahu restarting the war at this point, barring some kind of attack from Gaza.
As for Hamas, I can't see them restarting the war anytime soon either. Much of their leadership is dead and most of their fighters are as well. They have no real base to recruit from and no real weapons or support left. They are going to lose power in Gaza and I can't see them ever regaining the power they had before October 7th.
I do think, even if the cease-fire doesn't hold long term, that Trump has proven to be one of our best foreign policy presidents. All he does is end wars. I can't even count how many wars he has ended during his 2nd term. There was India-Pakistan, the Red Sea war against the Houthis in Yemen, the Congo war, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, the Israel-Iran conflict and now Israel-Hamas. And I might even be forgetting one or two. That's a legacy of peace that most people could even dream of.
Will Trump get any credit for it? To be fair, he's getting praise internationally, just about everyone in the Middle East seems pleased with this deal. Domestically, he's gotten a bit of praise from the Democrats, most notably from Senator Fetterman and former President Biden. But much of the Democratic Party is downplaying or ignoring the accomplishment, let alone the members of his base. Indeed, some of them have gone full nonsense about the agreement, saying that Trump had nothing to do with it, which is just deranged.
The reaction from the pro-Hamas protesters has been completely absent as well. That tells me two things, they never really cared about Gaza in the first place, they just hated Trump and Israel. And that they honestly don't know how to react to the news. The far-left is going to far-left, I guess.
Finally, Trump's next goal is ending the Russia-Ukraine war and that one is going to be a lot more difficult. I always said that the Israel-Gaza conflict was going to be comparatively easy to solve due to the fact that Hamas was largely defeated on the battlefield. That's not the case in the Ukraine conflict. Ukraine is certainly on the backfoot, and will lose the war eventually, but their army is still big enough to draw out the conflict for more than a year, if they make good decisions. If Trump somehow does manage to end the war quickly he will go down as one of the most important diplomats in American history, bar none.
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