President Donald Trump insisted on Sunday “the war is over” between Israel and Hamas and that he believed the ceasefire deal between the two would hold, saying “people are tired” of fighting between Jews and Muslims after centuries.
The president shared the comment with reporters aboard Air Force One while on his way to Israel. One reporter asked Trump if he was willing to say “the war is over,” despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not going that far to this point.
Trump immediately responded: “The war is over, okay. You understand that?”
A moment later, he was asked if he felt the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas would last.
“I think so. I think it’s going to hold. I think people are — a lot of reasons why it’s going to hold – but I think people are tired of it. It’s been centuries [of fighting], okay, not just recent. It’s been centuries. I think people are tired of it.”
You can hear audio of the
The president’s comments came shortly after he told reporters it is a “very special time” where Israel and Muslim countries are celebrating simultaneously — which he said has “never happened before” — after he spearheaded a deal between Israel and Hamas that will have dozens of hostages released on Monday.
Out of the remaining 48 hostages, 20 are believed to be alive.
Netanyahu on Oct. 9 said his country had fought for two years to achieve its war aims.
“A central one of these war aims is to return the hostages, all of the hostages, the living and the dead. And we are about to achieve that goal.”
Trump is on his way to Israel a little more than two years after Hamas terrorists broke into the country from Gaza and killed 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages.
A crowd at a Tel Aviv rally on Saturday, where hundreds of thousands of people showed up, broke into a chant of “Thank you, Trump! Thank you, Trump!” while Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, was speaking.
The president, in another audio clip shared to X, said he heard some of the hostages may be released even slightly earlier than expected on Monday. He said their circumstances over the past two years were so grim that “they were in places that you don’t