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On the day Israel and Hamas exchanged captives and detainees as part of the Gaza deal, US President Donald Trump framed the agreement he helped negotiate as a “historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
“This is not just the end of a war, it is the end of an era of terror and death and the beginning of the era of faith and hope and God,” Trump told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Monday.
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Trump’s speech focused on his administration’s efforts to produce an agreement between Israel and Hamas, including a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of 20 Israeli captives, 250 Palestinian political prisoners and around 1,700 Gaza detainees held without charge. Many of the Palestinians were “forcibly disappeared” of Gaza by Israel.
Future phases of Trump’s 20-point plan that could lead to lasting peace are complicated and uncertain. After his speech, Trump flew to Egypt to sign the deal with world leaders at a summit that launched the first phase of the deal.
Under the plan, Arab and international partners will develop a stabilization force to deploy in Gaza, while day-to-day governance would shift from Hamas to a Palestinian committee. The committee will include Palestinians and international experts, under the supervision of the “Peace Board,” chaired by Trump and including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Trump, the fourth US president to address the Knesset, praised his hand-picked negotiator, Steve Witkoff, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, while attacking his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He also called on Israeli President Isaac Herzog to forgive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced a years-long corruption case.
Here are fact checks of some of Trump’s comments:
Trump said he “solved eight wars in eight months”
The deal signed Monday is widely considered a historic moment in a decades-long conflict, and Trump was a key player. But his repeated speech about solving eight wars is exaggerated.
Trump participated in ceasefires that have recently eased conflicts between Israel and Iran, India and Pakistan, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. But these were mostly incremental deals, and some leaders question the extent of Trump’s role.
Peace has not been maintained in other conflicts. The United States participated in a temporary peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, but violence in the region has continued, with hundreds of civilians killed since the agreement was signed in June. After Trump helped broker a deal between Cambodia and Thailand, the countries accused each other of ceasefire violations that led to violent skirmishes.
A protracted standoff between Egypt and Ethiopia over an Ethiopian dam on the Nile remains unresolved, closer to a diplomatic dispute than a military confrontation. In the case of Kosovo and Serbia, there is little evidence that a potential war was brewing.
Trump has made notable progress in securing the ceasefire and captive agreement between Israel and Hamas, but the agreement involves multiple stages, so it will take time to see if the peace holds.
‘So we dropped 14 bombs on Iran’s main nuclear facilities, totally destroying them, as I originally said. That has been confirmed.’
It is impossible to know whether Operation Midnight Hammer – in which the United States bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities in June to undermine Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities – succeeded in “destroying” those sites, because intelligence from the United States and its allies is not necessarily available to the public.
More than three months after the US attack on Fordow, a major underground Iranian nuclear site, it is unclear how much damage the US bombs caused. Authorities have not publicly released a definitive assessment of the damage.
An Aug. 20 analysis by The New York Times said subsequent assessments have found an increasing likelihood that the attack caused significant damage. However, the Times concluded that “with so many variables – and so many unknowns – it can be difficult to ever be truly sure.”
“The Iran nuclear deal turned out to be a disaster.”
Trump omits that Iran had largely complied with the 2015 nuclear deal, in which the country agreed not to develop nuclear weapons and allow continued monitoring of its compliance in exchange for economic sanctions relief. The agreement was to expire in 10 to 25 years.
Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and did not renegotiate the agreement as promised.
Many experts praised the pact for keeping nuclear weapons out of Tehran’s reach. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it found that Iran committed no violations, other than minor infractions that were addressed.
After abandoning the pact, the United States imposed economic sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, and Iran reduced its compliance with the agreement.
Under the Obama and Biden administrations, “there was a hatred towards Israel, it was an absolute hatred”
The two Democratic presidents had somewhat strained relations with Netanyahu, who often courted American Republican leaders, but during their terms the United States continued to support Israeli foreign policy and its military.
Osamah Khalil, a history professor at Syracuse University and an expert on the modern Middle East, said it is not true that Obama or Biden “maintained personal animosity toward Israel, especially toward Biden.”
“Indeed, both administrations oversaw the expansion of American military assistance and coordination with Israel,” Khalil said. “In 2016, Obama signed the largest US military aid package in history.”
In 2016, the United States and Israel signed a 10-year, $38 billion memorandum of understanding. He cited several priorities, including upgrading the Israeli air fleet and maintaining the country’s missile defense system.
Military funding for Israel continued under Biden. In the two years since October 7, 2023, the US government spent $21.7 billion on military aid to Israel.
Biden ordered the deployment of US troops in and around Israel and Gaza and protected Israel at the UN by blocking many ceasefire resolutions, Khalil said.
Obama and Biden ‘did nothing with this incredible document, the Abraham Accords’
Obama’s presidency ended years before the Abraham Accords were signed.
The 2020 agreement during Trump’s first term brought together the leaders of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The countries agreed to peace and cooperation with Israel, establishing embassies, preventing hostilities and promoting tourism and trade.
The Biden administration attempted to bring Saudi Arabia into the deal, but this effort languished after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7, 2023, sparked Israel’s brutal war on Gaza. A United Nations commission of inquiry called Israeli actions in Gaza genocide.
After Israel’s war on Gaza, “the idea of official relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia became much more difficult,” said Jeremy Pressman, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut and an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
During this war, Israel killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, and destroyed 92 percent of all residential buildings in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.
