President Donald Trump‘s landmark peace deal between Israel and Hamas earned international praise on Monday and sealed his legacy as a president who stopped wars.
During a celebratory trip to Israel and Egypt that saw Hamas release all 20 living hostages and Arab partners back the deal, Trump ushered in what he declared a “historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
The peace deal, after more than two years of death and destruction in Gaza, comes as Trump is weighing his own mortality. While he quipped aboard Air Force One that he may not be “heaven-bound,” he said he wants his presidency to save lives.
“I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make heaven, but I’ve made life a lot better for a lot of people,” he said.
The introspection comes as Trump is to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday as he looks to continue his winning streak. His efforts to end Russia’s war on Ukraine remain ongoing and a goal for his administration after forging agreements elsewhere to end conflicts, including with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Congo, and Rwanda.
Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley contended that “any man or woman of accomplishment” contemplated their legacy.
“If they are as inner-directed and successful as Trump is, they certainly think about their place in history,” Shirley told the Washington Examiner. “Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times? … In Trump’s case, he is making the times he lives in.”
Regarding Trump’s legacy, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner the president’s “results speak for themselves.”
“He secured a historic peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, with buy-in from leaders around the world, when no one thought it could be done,” Kelly said. “Of course, the president wants to go to heaven just like everyone else, but his priority is ending human suffering and saving lives.”
Another historian, David Greenberg, dismissed Trump’s legacy, at least domestically, arguing that the president “has done a lot of harm to our political culture, including by eroding checks on presidential power, undermining liberal institutions, and degrading the public discourse.”
“I fully expect that his primary legacy will be that he damaged much of what has made America great,” Greenberg told the Washington Examiner.
But the Rutgers University professor conceded: “In the short term, bringing an end to the fighting in Gaza is a huge win for Trump. More importantly, if the rest of his 20-point plan is fulfilled — and that ‘if’ is looking shakier than it did two weeks ago — it will be a major check mark on the plus side of the ledger that history will almost certainly remember well.”
To that end, Trump received bipartisan praise on Monday after the 20 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, were returned to their families and friends at Re’im Military Base, Israel, and more than 2,000 Palestinian prisoners were deported to the West Bank, Gaza, or Egypt.
“This is an incredible accomplishment and an incredible moment,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN.
Trump, who was in the Middle East on Monday for less than 24 hours, was welcomed to Tel Aviv, Israel with a “thank you” banner on the city’s beach and a red carpet at its airport before he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drove together to Jerusalem for Trump to meet some of the hostages, all men aged 21 to 48.
“I got my life back thanks to you,” one hostage told Trump there.
Afterward, Trump addressed Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, the first U.S. president to do so since former President George W. Bush in 2008.
Though a liberal Israeli lawmaker protested Trump during his speech, others wore red hats with the words “Trump, The Peace President,” and Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced he would award Trump the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor, the country’s highest civilian honor.
Trump’s remarks will likely be remembered for encouraging Herzog to pardon Netanyahu for corruption charges amid his ongoing trial, but he also used the opportunity to describe a “historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
“After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today, the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace,” the president said. “This is not only the end of a war. This is the end of an age of terror and death, and the beginning of the age of faith, and hope, and of God. It’s the start of a grand concord and lasting harmony for Israel and all the nations of what will soon be a truly magnificent region.”
Despite Netanyahu not similarly declaring an end to the war being a cause of consternation, Trump is already considering a larger peace deal including Hamas-funding Iran.
“We are ready when you are, and it will be the best decision that Iran has ever made,” he said. “It’s going to happen.”
Trump then traveled to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where the peace deal was negotiated, for a signing ceremony and a summit of almost two dozen world leaders, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas but excluding Netanyahu, about what comes after the ceasefire, which went into effect on Friday.
“This is the day that people across the regions and around the world have been working, striving, hoping, and praying for,” Trump said. “With the historic agreement we’ve just signed, those prayers of millions have finally been answered… Together, we have achieved what everybody said was impossible. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East.”
At the same time, so many questions remain after Israel Defense Forces partially retreated in Gaza on Friday and permitted humanitarian aid into the enclave, including details regarding Trump’s board of peace, his stabilization peacekeeping force, his reconstruction plan, and his governance proposal amid concerns Hamas will not relinquish its weapons or political power.
Trump told reporters in Egypt that discussions regarding phase two of the Israel-Hamas peace deal had commenced, previewing pressure he is likely to place on Arab countries to help reconstruct Gaza.
“In the other room, you have the wealthiest, some of the wealthiest nations in the world,” he said. “I think you’ll see some tremendous progress.”
Nevertheless, Egypt greeted Trump on Monday with an F-16 escort and announced that it would give Trump its highest state honor, the Order of the Nile.
During the signing ceremony, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told Trump he was nominating the president for a Nobel Peace Prize after he was not awarded this year’s prize last week.
“I genuinely feel that he is the most genuine and most wonderful candidate,” Sharif said. “I think that you are the man this world needed most at this point in time. The world will always remember you as a man who did everything, went out of his way, to stop seven, and today eight wars.”
Meanwhile, Trump seems to be turning his attention to the other war that has complicated his presidency and Nobel Peace Prize campaign as he contemplates his legacy: the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
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Trump and Zelensky connected on the phone last weekend, with the Ukrainian writing on social media, “If a war can be stopped in one region, then surely other wars can be stopped as well – including the Russian war.”
Zelensky is expected to be at the White House on Friday as Trump deliberates deploying Tomahawks to Ukraine, but he is first anticipated to talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Ukraine strikes Russia’s oil industry in Russia’s west.
