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October 10, 2025

By Stephen Collinson

President Donald Trump during a bilateral meeting with Finland's President Alexander Stubb in the Oval office of the White House on Thursday. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)

'Everlasting peace'?

Only Donald Trump could have secured the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. And only he can turn it into a permanent peace deal.

The breakthrough could see the return of the remaining Israeli hostages in return for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

News of the agreement sparked celebrations in Israel and Gaza, and rare hopes that a brutal war started by the Hamas October 7, 2023, attacks could finally be over.

Trump reacted to the news with his characteristic restraint.

“We reached a momentous breakthrough in the Middle East, something that people said was never going to be done. We ended the war in Gaza, and really, on a much bigger basis, created peace, and I think it's going to be a lasting peace, hopefully, an everlasting peace, peace in the Middle East,” he said.

In truth, the agreement is merely the first tentative step in Trump’s 20-point peace plan that envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and eventually a formalized cohabitation between Israelis and Palestinians on a potential long road to statehood.

But Trump’s role was crucial.

The agreement emerged because he finally decided to lean on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after jamming him with the proposal during a recent White House visit. The US president is popular in Israel — and used that leverage intelligently to make sure Netanyahu couldn’t wriggle out of his pressure. 

Trump was also uniquely placed to enlist key Arab states to get Hamas on board. His ties with oil-rich monarchies and willingness to mix his own business interests with US foreign policy often suggest corrupt bargains. But these states, such as Saudi Arabia, will be vital to funding any rebuilding of Gaza. The spur for Trump’s pressure on Netanyahu appears to have been the Israeli air strikes on Hamas negotiations in Qatar — an important US ally. This may have been the moment when Israel’s self-isolating war directly threatened US interests and left Washington no choice but to act. Trump has since offered Qatar US security guarantees. Was this perhaps a quid pro quo to entice Doha to exert extra pressure to force Hamas to sign up?

Skilled peacemakers often have to create the illusion of possibility to allow for progress in peace talks that everyone else thinks are impossible. Trump did that. His facility at creating alternative realities that are corrosive in most circumstances might have been useful here. And while we’re looking on the bright side, his ignorance of much of the history of the Middle East made it easier to see the war in simple terms as he called for an end to the killing.

But the easy bit is over.

The next few days will tell whether the living hostages and the remains of those who have died really do come out of Gaza. Then the intricate work of enforcing trickier parts of the peace plan will begin. This includes Israeli withdrawals from Gaza, the demilitarization of Hamas and the group ceding its governing role in the territory. A huge humanitarian aid effort will be needed with many Palestinian civilians on the edge of starvation, according to aid agencies. 

Trump has a notoriously short attention span. So will he maintain the intensity of his involvement in the boring bits ahead? If he can’t, the whole thing may fall apart like previous Middle East peace plans that foundered because leaders on the Israeli or Palestinian side were unprepared to make painful concessions. One reason to hope that Trump will stay engaged is that he now has a genuine achievement for his campaign to be seen as the "president of peace” and will want to make sure it isn’t spoiled.

Trump’s fans have already revived the increasingly tiresome campaign for him to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump’s obsession with winning this recognition is juvenile. And it’s rather absurd, since only this week Trump tried to send troops into the streets of two American cities based on his fantastical and Constitution-buckling claims of rebellion. He keeps blasting speedboats out of the seas off Venezuela — that he claims belong to drug cartels — on opaque legal grounds. And the great peacemaker just renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War.

Still, maybe something good can come of the whole Nobel farce. If Trump thinks he can win it, maybe he’ll keep his eye on the ball in Gaza.

'Trained seals'

If you want reasoned debate, intellectual rigor, rhetorical flair and political integrity, the last place you’d look would be a hearing in the US Congress.

But even the pitiful standards on Capitol Hill plunged to a new low with an appearance by Attorney General Pam Bondi before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. 

Bondi petulantly snapped at senators and mocked them. She reeled off a list of comebacks prepared in advance at individual questioners, mirroring Trump’s classic slanders, accusing them of corruption and blind hatred of the president. And she refused to answer questions on just about everything — including the government’s refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Granted, many of the Democratic senators in the hearing are well-known grandstanders themselves and hardly live up to the august and mythical reputation of what they regard as the world’s greatest deliberative body.

But there’s rarely been a more overt display of the Trump administration’s contempt for the idea of congressional oversight and the idea that there should be any constraints on a president who falsely thinks he has absolute power. In a week in which former FBI chief James Comey had a first court appearance and prosecutors indicted another Trump enemy, New York Attorney General Letitia James, the hearing was a new sign of the desecration of the Justice Department.

It was also the latest example of how Trump’s Cabinet appointees seek to outdo one another in sycophantic and unintentionally comical melodramas to please a boss who spends hours watching TV.

“They're acting like trained seals for Donald Trump,” said Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.

What to watch next week —

Trump's victory lap 

Trump says he plans to head to Egypt next week for a signing ceremony on the Middle East ceasefire deal. It’s not yet clear who else will be there, including who will sign for Hamas.

Hopefully, that will be followed by the release of hostages, some relief for Palestinians in Gaza who’ve suffered terribly and some peace for the relatives of those taken by Hamas who will never come home.

Trump was so buoyant on Thursday that he even praised the press. “Even the news — I won't call it fake news for this purpose cause they really were very fair today, I must tell you. In all cases ... they covered it very well, they covered it very fairly. Everybody loves it, everybody. People that were never giving us a fair shake, frankly, they can't even believe it, they're — they're so — they're amazed by it.”

A Middle East ceasefire is one thing. If Trump voluntarily entered a truce with the media, that would be really something.