Trump Declares Gaza War Over as Netanyahu Skips Sharm el-Sheikh Peace Summit
At a high-stakes summit in Egypt, Donald Trump claims to end the Gaza war and broker a “new Middle East,” while Netanyahu’s absence fuels political speculation in Israel.
Jerusalem, October 13 EST: The quiet in Gaza tonight doesn’t sound like peace. It’s heavier than that the kind of silence that comes after too many funerals. Still, for the first time in two years, the shelling has stopped. The borders are still. And somewhere between the sand and the politics, Donald Trump has found a stage again.
A Deal Made for Cameras and History
He arrived in Israel the way he does everything loud, sure of himself, and unbothered by what came before. At the Knesset, Trump stood before Israeli lawmakers and called the end of the Gaza war “the dawn of a new Middle East.” The words hung in the air like a slogan, not a policy. But he had something tangible to show for them: twenty living hostages home, nearly two thousand Palestinian prisoners released, and an uneasy ceasefire stitched together by American hands.
According to TIME, the agreement was hammered out quietly through Cairo and Doha, far from microphones. It wasn’t elegant diplomacy, just pressure and timing the two things Trump understands. He framed it as strength, not compromise, the way he always does.
And then came the familiar break in decorum: a call for Benjamin Netanyahu’s pardon. It landed with an audible shift in the room some applause, some stone faces. Israel’s politics are brittle right now; the last thing anyone wanted was the U.S. president freelancing inside them. But that’s Trump’s instinct: to walk straight into someone else’s crisis and claim it as his own.
Netanyahu Sits This One Out
The man himself stayed away. Officially, Netanyahu was observing Simchat Torah. Unofficially, he didn’t want to be there not next to Trump, not at the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, not in the photo that will end up in every textbook. His coalition partners on the right already hate the deal, calling it a betrayal. Standing beside Trump while prisoners walked free would’ve been political suicide.
People close to Netanyahu told AP News the choice was “purely logistical,” but no one in Jerusalem believes that. His absence said what his statements didn’t: the era of Netanyahu as the region’s central player may be closing.
The Summit and the Optics
Sharm el-Sheikh has seen this before Camp David, Oslo, Wye River. The same flags, the same handshakes. But this time, the cast was different. Trump and el-Sisi at the front, Jordan’s King Abdullah and a parade of European leaders nearby. Iran boycotted. Russia, distracted and diminished, gave its blessing from afar.
According to The Financial Times, the deal signed there is only the first chapter of a 20-point peace framework: an end to fighting now, gradual demilitarization of Hamas, reconstruction of Gaza, and an international fund to bankroll it all. It’s ambitious, maybe even reckless. But that’s often how things start in this part of the world with more hope than structure.
The Politics Beneath the Celebration
Inside Israel, reactions were split down familiar lines. The hostage families wept with relief; the far-right called the prisoner swap “humiliation dressed as peace.” For Palestinians, the images of freed prisoners returning to the West Bank carried a kind of muted defiance. Everyone claimed a victory, and no one really won.
Trump, meanwhile, treated the moment like a personal reentry into the global spotlight. “This is not Obama’s Iran deal,” he told reporters a line meant as both jab and declaration. The message was simple: strength works, diplomacy doesn’t.
But the truth is harder. The guns are quiet because both sides are spent. Israel’s army is stretched thin. Hamas has been gutted but not erased. Gaza is rubble. The world has grown tired of counting bodies. What Trump called peace may just be exhaustion with a new name.
Fragile Calm, Familiar Pattern
At Rafah Crossing, aid trucks rolled through under U.N. supervision. In Tel Aviv, crowds filled Habima Square, waving pictures of loved ones finally home. Across Gaza, people picked through debris in the half-light, trying to remember what normal sounds like.
It’s a fragile calm, and everyone knows it. Deals like this have lived and died beforeRabin’s handshake, Sharon’s withdrawal, Obama’s red lines. History here never ends; it just circles back.
For now, Trump has what he wanted: a headline, a legacy play, the image of a man ending a war he didn’t start. Whether it holds is someone else’s problem. Netanyahu will claim credit in time. Hamas will regroup. The world will move on. And in the space between wars, the silence will keep its own uneasy peace.
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A political science PhD who jumped the academic ship to cover real-time governance, Olivia is the East Coast's sharpest watchdog. She dissects power plays in Trenton and D.C. without bias or apology.
