President Donald Trump announced that he plans to visit the Gaza Strip following the recent peace deal between Israel and Hamas, telling Time magazine that respect for the President of the United States is “the most important factor” in ensuring long-term peace in the Middle East, as reported by the New York Post.
“The most important thing,” Trump said in the interview published Thursday:
“They have to respect the president of the United States. The Middle East has to understand that.”
He continued, “And they do. If you go to Qatar, if you go to Saudi Arabia, if you go to UAE, who are the three big ones, in that sense, they all respect the president, and if they’re not going to respect the president — it’s almost the president more so than the country. You understand that? If they don’t respect the president, and if the president doesn’t know what he’s doing, it could break apart. If they do respect the president, it’s going to be long-term beautiful peace.”
President Trump, who helped broker the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas earlier this month, said he expects Saudi Arabia to officially join the Abraham Accords by the end of the year.
“They had a problem,” Trump said of Saudi Arabia.
“They had a Gaza problem and they had an Iran problem. Now they don’t have those two problems.”
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The cease-fire, reached on October 10, included the release of the last 20 living Israeli hostages and the return of over two dozen sets of remains. Trump did not give a timeline for his visit to Gaza but made clear that his administration would not tolerate any violations of the agreement by Hamas.
“Nobody would mind if we went in and took [Hamas] to task” if they backtracked, Trump said.
Trump noted that securing the deal required convincing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to approve. “Bibi, you can’t fight the world,” Trump recalled telling Netanyahu.
“You can fight individual battles, but the world’s against you. And Israel is a very small place compared to the world.”
He also criticized Israel’s September 9 bombing that targeted Hamas political leaders in Qatar. “That was terrible,” Trump said, calling it “a tactical mistake.”
Still, he added, “It was so out of joint that it sort of got everybody to do what they have to do. If you took that away, we might not be talking about this subject right now.”
Trump emphasized that Israel will not be permitted to annex the West Bank. “It won’t happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries,” he warned. “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.”
He also said he has a personal rapport with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the Egypt peace summit earlier this month. Abbas, 89, has led the Palestinian Authority since 2005.
Reflecting on the negotiations, Trump said Netanyahu had been eager to continue military operations until he intervened. “I stopped him, because he would have just kept going,” Trump said.
“It could have gone on for years. It would have gone on for years. And I stopped him, and everybody came together when I stopped, it was amazing.”
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