Illustrative image. (Israeli Defense Forces)
After announcing a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the war in the Gaza Strip, United States President Donald Trump said that his plan would promote “peace in the Middle East.”
Trump made the historic announcement on October 8, just over two years after the outbreak of the war in Gaza, saying in a post on Truth Social that Israel and Hamas had signed off on the “first phase” of his plan to release all hostages and end the war.
Later in an interview with “Hannity” on Fox News, Trump said that the whole world come together to push his plan for peace in the Strip.
“The whole world came together, to be honest, so many countries that you wouldn’t have even thought of it, and they came together. The world has come together around this deal, and that’s something I would say that without it, that wouldn’t happen,” he said. “So many countries that you wouldn’t have thought of have wired their best wishes and their commitment to do whatever is necessary. The countries surrounding have all signed, I mean, they’re all signed up, and it’s been, it’s been really an amazing period of time.”
Trump then went on to claim that “this is more than Gaza. This is peace in the Middle East, an incredible thing.” He added that there was a “set of circumstances” that allowed the deal to happen, including the 12-day war with Iran in June, which saw both Israel and the U.S. attacking nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic.
“Iran was about one month, maybe two months, away from having a nuclear weapon, and if I allowed that to happen, this deal would not have been possible,” he said. “Or if it was, it would have a tremendous cloud over it, because you’d have a country with a nuclear weapon that was not obviously very friendly.”
In a bold claim, Trump said that he believed “Iran is going to be, actually, a part of the whole peace situation” because “countries that frankly didn’t get along, they’re all involved, and it’s brought the whole world together.”
Trump also revealed in the interview that the 48 hostages still held captive in Gaza, including 20 who are believed to be still alive, would “probably be released on Monday [October 13].”
“They [the hostages] are in a terrible situation there. They are deep, deep in the earth,” Trump said, referring to the Hamas tunnels under Gaza. “As we speak, so much is happening to get the hostages freed.”
Before the hostages are released, Israel will withdraw troops from most of Gaza. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced on October 9 that it had begun preparations for the withdrawal.
In a statement, the military said that “per the directives of the political echelon and in accordance with a situation assessment, the IDF has begun operational preparations for the implementation of the agreement.”
“The IDF continues to be deployed in the area and is preparing for any operational development,” it added.
In addition to the withdrawal, a top official within Hamas told AFP that Israel will release nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the living hostages.
Exactly at 12:00 p.m. local time, a ceasefire in Gaza entered into effect, signaling commitment by both Israel and Hamas to the agreement.
As of October 9, the Israeli war on Gaza has claimed the lives of 67,183 Palestinians with more than 169,841 others wounded. On the Israeli side, 2,079 people have been killed and more than 13,500 others have been wounded.
The current agreement covers only the first phase of Trump’s plan. In later phases, the plan demands the disarmament of Hamas, the complete withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, and placing the Strip under the control of a new Palestinian authority with international supervision. Talks on later phases will likely start shortly.
Trump’s optimism about a wider peace in the Middle East after the end of the war in Gaza is not, of course, without a reason.
Syria has been in talks with Israel for months. While a peace deal between the two countries remains far off, they could sign a security agreement shortly after the first phase of the Gaza deal is completed. Hebrew and Arab media reports from September, before the final talks on Gaza, indicate that the agreement was already nearly complete.
Alongside Syria, Saudi Arabia could also use the end of the war in Gaza to renew its push to normalize with Israel. Preventing a peace deal between the kingdom and Israel was reportedly one of the motives behind the Hamas-led October 7 surprise attack from Gaza that started the war in 20123.
The situation for Lebanon is very different, however. Peace in Gaza will allow Israel to shift its focus back towards Hezbollah. After withdrawing from most of the Strip, the IDF will have enough assets to renew the war in Lebanon with a large-scale ground operation.
The Lebanese government has been responding to pressure from the U.S. and Israel positively, even passing an official plan to disarm Hezbollah in September. Still, there has been no progress in this regard, with the group refusing to give up its weapons. A ceasefire brokered by Washington in November also remains one-sided, with the IDF launching strikes against Lebanon on a near-daily basis.
Taking everything into account, Lebanon is definitely now closer to a war with Israel than to a peace deal, or even a limited security agreement like Syria.
Meanwhile in Yemen, the Houthis, who have been waging a campaign of missile and drone strikes against Israel-linked shipping and the country itself in response to the war on Gaza, could de-esclate. Israel, however, may step up operations against Yemen because, as already explained, the IDF will have more assets on hand with the war over in the Strip.
As for Iran, Trump seems too optimistic. The chances of the Islamic Republic joining any peace efforts are non-existent. Meanwhile, a new Israeli attack on Iran remains very likely. In fact, recent U.S. military movements in the Middle East indicate that an Israeli-American attack may be in the making.
By saying that Iran could join peace, Trump may be in fact hinting at a regime change in Tehran. While this seems too wild of an idea, the same can be said about the first attack on the Islamic Republic in June.
All in all, the end of the war in Gaza will offer a chance for peace, but that’s only for countries who were not involved in a conflict with Israel in the first place. For those who stood with Hamas, like Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis, war seems much closer.
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without the russian nonsense that lasted 14 years, when putin used syria the training ground to train his men for an attack on ukraine, hts would have been overthrown in a year, as happened in egypt with the morsi government.
sdgsd vfdb vchr hfdh vchfd dsgds
begin working at home with google! it’s by a wide margin the best occupation i’ve had. last wednesday i got a fresh of box new bmw since getting a check for $13474 this – month kah passed. i started this 8 months prior and promptly was bringing home, at any rate, $every hour. i work through this connection, go to the tech tab for work detail… https://cashprofit7-7dd.pages.dev/
dumb americunt animal must pay me taco to scrub hebrew toilet
no profiling here !
putin is a traitor and because of his betrayal, syria is now a wahhabi den that will inevitably threaten the security of china and india.
when the uyghurs strike, i only hope that china strikes back and strikes hard enough to make syria disappear.
mia when will we get mia-front.org?
for a few days now, the “like/dislike” feature has been disabled in the comments section of southfront articles.
i think this is a mistake, since rating rewards good comments and degrades intrusions by trolls and spammers.
the “like/dislike” feature also helps us, at a glance, avoid wasting time reading trash.
they create a desert and call it peace. if anyone thinks the jooz will abide by the terms of any agreement, i’ve got a bridge to sell them. people need to be aware that the jooz are taking over the whole of the media, tik tok, cbs, everything. shabbos chumpo is giving tik tok to his joo buddy ellison, to go with all the rest of the joo media, jootube, joobook. the whole of the media is owned by 6 zio billionaires. people need to be aware that every piece of news and information
they receive is censored and controlled by joo gatekeepers and joo stooges like musk. they will just peddle hasbara lies 24/7.
zionism cannot exist in peace. it is land theft, pedophilia, murder and arrogance nonstop. any “peace” deal peddle by ussa is fake and there is trojan horse involved
the problem is not only zionism and israel but joos and judaism itself, (and also not only the khazars – like commentor like aragon repeatedly stated here – which today claim to be joos). no. judaism is the highest form of satanism. joos are parasites and got expelled by all kind of nations on earth nearly a 1000 times already since 733 (!) b.c. thats roughly 2730 years ago by now. see: https://cutturl.com/uc5ezwg
israel getting gang banged by an 8 front war, the whore of babylon needs needs a rest according to her pimp
8 fronts ? the zionists are still in ukraine, active in asia and africa. to mention a few
it’s a reverse gang bang though. where israel (as the man) has a big circumcised schlong that all the arab bitches are taking over and over again.
this was not a “war” it was genocide…
as of october 9, the israeli genocide on gaza has claimed the lives of 67,183 palestinians.
that count can not be verified. too many buried bodies to find. hardly anyone is left to count !
the palestinian authority who’s duty was to register and update these mortality stats was wiped out within six months of the genocide starting, deliberately targetted by the inbreds’ lavender program.
a more reliable figure would be half the population.
this next war in iran will be telling in seeing if russia and china are truly for a multipolar reality — or whether they will appease the global banking overlords.
they’ll appease the banking overlords guaranteed. russia and china aren’t serious competitors to the united states. the us and nato make mistakes left and right and none of our “adversaries” can ever capitalize on them because their leaders are owned by the usa.
this is not a deal, palestine only gets to surrender. there is nothing offered to the palestinian collective. no food, no housing, no clothing, no land to live on. the west bank is purposely omitted. most of the highly propagandized israeli hostages have already died from american bombs and starvation.
peacemaker chumpo’s peace deals turning into unilateral ceasefires every single time, where one side gets threatened with “all hell break out” if they don’t give up their last tiny bit of self-interest – and the other side gets tons over tons of bombs and ammunition worth billions over billions of taxpayer dollars for free.
shabbos chumpo has to earn his adelson shekels like a good little goy whore.
led this zionist wage a war in lebnon . houthis and iran will stop supporting hezbollah and iraqi ressitance will join the attack. if zionist want to get humilated let them. the most problem is here is not zionist is the sunni arab traiotor who has hatred towards shia and ready to join zionist who is the nemy of islam to kill shia .
it isn’t any sunni, it is wahhabis slave. states mi6 zioshit they created those monarchies
trumpian “peace” means brutal neo-colonial oppression. zionist brutality towards gaza is worthy of attila the hun, genghis khan, or leopold ii, but it represents the continuing oppression and exploitation of the ordinary people of the middle east by local and global ruling classes. tacitus: “to ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desolation, they call it peace.”
i hope the resistance don’t hold back, god willing victory is guaranteed.
lammy has just given £94 million of uk taxpayer money to fake “president” and isis headchopper-in-chief jewlani, or whatever he calls himself now. while uk police goon squads arrest 93 year old terrorists in wheelchairs for holding up a cardboard sign. welcome to the uk zog regime.
we keep 53% gaza; dumb hamas must slurp hebrew jizz
the problem has always the arabs who are nothing but collaborators