Trump urges Israel to make peace in address to Knesset

Donald Trump urged Israel to shift focus from waging war against Hamas to what he called the ultimate prize of “peace and “prosperity” in the Middle East region as he became just the fifth American president to address the Knesset.

- ANDREW FEINBERG BEL TREW

In remarks to the Israeli parliament that were equal parts triumphant and rambling, he said the implementation of a ceasefire agreement and the return of the remaining living hostages marked the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” and an “incredible triumph for Israel and the world.”

He also publicly urged Israeli president Isaac Herzog to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu on the breach of trust, bribery, and fraud charges he faces.

However, Mr Trump’s remarks concentrated on the peace deal. “Generations from now, this will be remembered as the moment that everything began to change,” he said.

"As the dust settles, the smoke fades, the debris is removed, and the ashes clear from the air, the day breaks on a region transformed and a beautiful and much brighter future appears suddenly within our reach."

He also hailed the implementation of the peace deal he’d floated just weeks earlier alongside Mr Netanyahu at the White House as not only the end of the two-year-old war, but the end of what he called “the age of terror and death” in favour of “the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God”.

“It will be the golden age of Israel, and the golden age of the Middle East,” he added.

The president’s remarks followed a rapturous reception as he entered the Knesset chamber, with members chanting his name as well as the name of his roving peace envoy, Steve Witkoff. Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, Witkoff’s negotiating partner, also received a standing ovation.

He spoke just hours after the Israel Defense Forces confirmed that all 20 of the remaining living hostages taken by Hamas were back in Israeli custody and on Israeli soil, ending more than two years of captivity, and just days after Israel finished the years-long bombing campaign against Gaza that has claimed roughly 70,000 lives.