President Trump said Friday that he plans to speak to Israel’s Knesset and then visit Cairo as he travels to the Middle East as Hamas releases its final 20 Israeli hostages.
“I’ll be going to Israel. I’ll be speaking at the Knesset, I think early on, and then I’m also going to Egypt. They were terrific,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump is expected to participate in a formal peace-deal signing while in the Egyptian capital, formalizing the first phase of implementation of his 20-point peace plan.
“Gaza is going to be rebuilt,” Trump added, noting that he will supervise reconstruction of the 2 million-person region as chairman of the Board of Peace due to monitor a transitional Palestinian government.
“We’re also setting up, as you know, a Board of Peace. It’s called the Board of Peace. I don’t know if that’s the final name, but the word ‘peace’ is definitely in there. They have asked me if I chair it. We’ll make sure things go well,” Trump said.
“They’re all tired of the fighting. Don’t forget, you had October 7, which was a horrible day, 1,200 people killed, but Hamas has lost 58,000 people. That’s big retribution.”
Trump touted the fact that the governments of Russia and Iran have supported his peace initiative and said that Arab countries’ residents were “dancing in the streets.”
He said he brought Hamas to a deal because “I spoke a little bit tough… they knew the retribution would be tremendous, unsustainable… It would have been it would have been complete obliteration.”
Trump said he would return to the White House Tuesday to bestow the late Charlie Kirk with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom.
