Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump said on Thursday during a cabinet meeting at the White House that he may fly to Egypt over the coming days to participate in an official signing ceremony sealing the deal on the Gaza peace plan.
This comes just hours after he announced that Israel and Hamas had come to an agreement on the first phase of his 20-point peace plan introduced last week, which aims to bring an end to the bloody conflict in Gaza.
“I think it’s going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, an everlasting peace,” he said during the meeting.
The president noted that his administration had secured the release of all remaining hostages from Hamas. They are expected to be returned between Monday and Tuesday of next week, he said.
“That will be a day of joy,” President Trump said. “I’m going to try and make a trip over.”
It is unclear if President Trump will be there to receive some of these hostages, but at the very least, he stated that he may fly to Egypt to have an “official signing” on the Gaza peace plan.
“The amazing thing is, all of the countries over there…they’ve all come together,” he said, noting Middle Eastern countries’ unity on the issue of bringing peace to the Gaza Strip.
President Trump said that among the hostages expected to be brought home next week, 28 of them are deceased.
“To those parents, the dead young man is just as important as though this person was alive,” the president explained.
He also noted that the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was truly “terrible,” but noted that Israeli retribution had cost Hamas and Gaza 70,000 casualties. “That’s big retribution,” he remarked. “At some point, that whole thing has to stop.”