The situation was all but hopeless, most observers believed. Wars, hot and cold, had defined the Middle East for decades – or centuries, depending on one’s perspective, dating all the way back to the days of the Old Testament. Every concentrated effort by American presidents, the United Nations, and globetrotting diplomats had fallen well short of steadying a region defined by instability, political violence, and religious extremism.
There were failed attempts to achieve a lasting peace by every president from Richard Nixon to Joe Biden. And while President Jimmy Carter brokered a historic deal between Israel and Egypt in 1978, the closest we came to settling the explosive issue of Palestinians displaced by the establishment of the state of Israel was in the waning days of President Bill Clinton’s second term in 2000, when he invested most of his remaining political capital on more than two weeks of peace negotiations at Camp David. But even though Clinton offered the infamous Yasir Arafat even more concessions than he had initially demanded for Palestinians, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak consented, Arafat rejected the deal. This seemed to prove that Arafat and his allies were far more interested in exploiting the Palestinian issue than settling it.
Fast forward a quarter century, and as the summer of 2025 gave way to fall, even President Trump, peacemaker and dealmaker extraordinaire, seemed to be discouraged by intransigence on both sides engaged in the latest hot war, Israel and Hamas.
And yet we awaken this day to the hopeful dawn of a new era in the world’s most persistent hotspot. It might rightly be called, as in political parlance, a true October surprise, one that holds the promise of peace breaking out in a region where so many had understandably given up hope. Indeed, the 20-point peace plan devised by the president was, almost shockingly, embraced by Israel and our Arab allies alike, and with the remaining living hostages held for more than two years since the mass murder of innocents by Hamas now released, Monday, October 13, 2025, has the potential to stand as an inflection point in world history.
President Trump waxed eloquent in an address to the Israeli Knesset on this historic morning: "After two harrowing years in darkness and captivity, 20 courageous hostages are returning to the glorious embrace of their families. Twenty-eight more precious loved ones are coming home at last to rest in this sacred soil for all of time. And after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace."
Only Trump
How did Trump pull this off? As one person involved in negotiations told The Atlantic, the president prevailed, in large part because “It does make a difference when you’ve got somebody sitting in the Oval Office that everyone’s a bit terrified of.” Or, as Vice President JD Vance said on Fox News, President Trump is “the one person that everybody really trusts.” Imagine that. Bitter enemies halfway across the world, both putting their faith in the word of the 47th president, while half of our own country continues to denounce his very existence.
This deal perfectly frames the difference between Western civilization and regressive Muslim fanaticism. The most extreme example of the striking contrast came in 2011, when a single Israeli held by Hamas was freed in return for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. This time around, the Israelis care so deeply for the individual lives of their hostages that they are willing to release more than 1000 Hamas prisoners convicted of horrific crimes in exchange for 20 live hostages and the bodies of 28 others. Meanwhile, Hamas brutally slaughtered 1200 innocent Israelis, used women and children as human shields against Israeli counterattacks, and succeeded in convincing much of the world that, even though it was Hamas that obviously started the war, Israel was committing genocide in Gaza with its response. This, despite the fact that Israel warned Gazans about impending offensive operations, pleaded with them to clear out, and sent millions of pounds of food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A country bound and determined to wipe out an entire population would never have warned or sent aid to innocent civilians. Nevertheless, just days before the peace deal was announced, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia finally caved in to international pressure and officially recognized a “Palestinian state” ahead of the UN General Assembly.
But let’s not pull any punches when it comes to Hamas. It is a “radical 7th-century-aspiring, Sharia-supremacist, Islamist death cult,” as described by Josh Hammer, Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large, on Fox News. He added that “you cannot trust these people.” So, can Hamas actually be counted on to keep its word? The hopeful answer is yes, because this terrorist outfit is being driven to make good not by Israel, but by other American-aligned Arab states who are all in on the deal. It also helps that Iran’s nuclear program has been devastated by Trump’s bunker-busting attack, Iran-aligned Syrian strongman Bashar Assad has been deposed, and Iran’s most effective proxy, Hezbollah, has seen its military capacity all but neutered by Israel.
Middle East Peace and the Abraham Accords
This peace deal was, in large part, a product of the Abraham Accords signed during Trump’s first administration, when putative enemies of Israel – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – were convinced to offer diplomatic recognition and forge trade agreements with the Jewish state. Trump is hopeful of adding Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, post-Assad Syria, and others to the accords. It is safe to say that, if Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had not succeeded in creating the Abraham Accords, the deal now taking hold would never have happened. But now, many Muslim-majority nations are even offering to send troops to the peacekeeping force assigned to patrol the Gaza Strip.
The president has said that he believes he cheated death from an assassin’s bullet in Butler, PA, because God had a plan for him. In just nine months on the job, Trump has brokered multiple peace deals between bitter, longtime enemies: Azerbaijan and Armenia, Cambodia and Thailand, Israel and Iran, Rwanda and Congo, India and Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, Serbia and Kosovo. On this memorable day in the Middle East dreamed of for so long, we might well consider that if God did indeed spare Trump for a reason, it was Trump’s singular capacity to advance an outcome sought by all decent people across the globe: world peace.
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