Rapturously Received in the Knesset, Trump Tells Israel It Won the War, Now It’s Time for Peace

Rapturously Received in the Knesset, Trump Tells Israel It Won the War, Now It’s Time for Peace

 

US President Donald Trump declared “the historic dawn of the new Middle East” in a triumphant address before the Knesset on Monday, as the final 20 living hostages were released from Gaza under a US-brokered ceasefire deal. Trump said it marked “not only the end of war, but the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God.”

He told the lawmakers that Israel had no more to achieve on the battlefield and must work toward peace in the Middle East, and said he would deliver a similar message to regional leaders in Egypt later in the day. The president pressed Israel to look past the war, saying it had achieved all it could “by force of arms.”

“You’ve won. I mean, you’ve won,” he said. “Now it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.” — The Times of Israel

Our Take: President Trump just exerted himself onto the situation, and in doing so, completely rewrote the direction of the story.

Has Israel actually “won” anything? Not really. The Israeli economy is in shambles, decimated by the IDF’s mandated reservist program, and Israel’s public relations with the world is in poor shape, to say the least. Nobody in Netanyahu’s circle can really articulate what they plan to do with Gaza or the West Bank, other than to assert that it already belongs to them as a gift from God. But it seems clear that at least some people in the Israeli government intend to engage in an ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

So President Trump is now rewriting the story to give the Israeli political class a sense of accomplishment, much like he did the attack on Iran. In that situation, he ended the conflict and named it, as if in doing so he is codifying the engagement into the histories.

In reality, Trump just issued an ultimatum to the Israeli Knesset. He is telling them to stop warmongering and pursue peace. If they refuse and instead remain defiant, then President Trump has even reason to turn around and walk away.

What would happen next, I wonder? — GhostofBasedPatrickHenry

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Another Take: Remember how all the neocons and ConInc Twitter simps spent 2021-2024 making sure President Trump wouldn’t be in this position?

Notice how they’re all Israel First GOPe normies?

It’s like they didn’t want Trump to be successful in ending the “Israel constantly under threat” narrative. — Chris Paul