U.S. President Donald Trump landed in Israel on Monday to a rapturous welcome, from banners on the beach near Tel Aviv to a standing ovation in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, where his personal and pivotal role in bringing home the last 20 surviving Israeli hostages was thanked, effusively, by families, service members, and many—though not all—Israeli politicians.
Trump’s lightning trip to Israel started with a meeting with families of former hostages in Jerusalem. Hamas released all 20 of the remaining living captives early Monday, just before Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. The exchange was part of what is currently a cease-fire but which Trump hopes will be the first step in a comprehensive peace deal that sorts out the Gaza Strip’s future and disarms Hamas.
For starters came a valedictory, and a well-deserved one, as the cease-fire is in place, the hostages are home, and the cheers from Khan Younis, in the devastated Gaza Strip, to Tel Aviv echoed in unison.
What was also in unison were the messages that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump delivered to the Knesset. After Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023, “Israel did what it had to do,” Netanyahu declared on Monday—a tidy summation of a two-year war that leveled most of Gaza, led hundreds of thousands of people to flee, and killed, by official estimates, at least 67,000 Palestinians. Trump used the same words in describing his peace credentials and the power of the U.S. military: “We have to do what we have to do.”
Trump went on: “America joins you in those two everlasting vows: Never forget, and never again.”
Trump made it clear that he expects Netanyahu to stick to this cease-fire. While flying to Israel, he told reporters on Air Force One that the “war is over.” Even though Israeli forces will only make a partial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as part of Trump’s peace plan, renewed hostilities at this point would be a direct slap in the face of a president whom Netanyahu described as “the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.”
The solemnity and historic nature of the day, whether at the Re’im military base where the hostages were first ushered home via the care of the International Red Cross or the red-carpet treatment that Trump received at Ben Gurion Airport, are indelible. What was also indelible was the bellicose nature of Netanyahu’s remarks to the Knesset, in which he described a battle between civilization and barbarity; Trump later called his interlocutors in negotiations “monsters.”
Trump, in a typically rambling speech, praised his negotiating team, including Steve Witkoff, as well as Gen. Dan Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he also found time to wade wildly into Israeli politics. He asked Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu, who is under indictment for various counts of corruption and malfeasance and whose government may not last until the scheduled elections next fall.
Not everyone in the audience was pleased by Trump’s presence, though. As the U.S. president spoke, two Knesset members—Ayman Odeh, an Arab Israeli politician and head of the left-wing Hadash party, and Ofer Cassif, a party member—shouted protests and held up signs that read “Recognize Palestine” before being swiftly removed by security.
The theatrics of Trump’s Israel visit aside, the heavy lifting will begin later Monday at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which Trump will attend along with more than 20 world leaders, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; Netanyahu, however, will not be there. Nor will Iran’s leaders, who were invited by Egypt.
On the agenda are the very pressing questions about this peace deal: how to disarm Hamas, as the militant group has already started retaking control of areas vacated by the departing Israeli army; how to cobble together a workable governance structure for the Gaza Strip that is designed to exclude the only formation that ever won an election there; and how to begin the arduous, and expensive, process of rebuilding a place that is mostly rubble and ruin.
But, for now, Trump has his victory lap. As Netanyahu said while nominating Trump for Israel’s top honor, the Israel Prize, he may not have won “the other one”—a reference to the Nobel Peace Prize—but that day may come. Perhaps.
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