OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: US President Donald Trump warned Monday that the Palestinian people should turn away from “terror and violence” as he hailed a recently-minted ceasefire in Gaza in an address to Israel’s parliament.
To cheers and ovations from Knesset members, Trump said the truce in the two-year-old war could be a turning point for the entire Middle East.
“And the choice for Palestinians could not be more clear,” he said.
“This is their chance to turn forever from the path of terror and violence: To exile the wicked forces of hate that are in their midst, and I think that’s going to happen.”
More than 67,869 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its response to the Hamas attack, and almost all the more than two million civilians who lived there before the war have been driven from their homes at least once.
Hamas begins releasing Israeli hostages, as Trump heads to Israel
Gaza is more than ever dependent on humanitarian aid and its cities lie in ruins.
But, under pressure from Trump to claim a win, Israel agreed on Friday to a ceasefire and on Monday released around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the return of Hamas’s remaining 20 living Israeli hostages.
Trump told the Knesset that now was the time for Palestinians to move on.
“After tremendous pain and death and hardship, now is the time to concentrate on building their people up instead of trying to tear Israel down. We don’t want that to happen again,” Trump said.
“And the total focus of Gazans must be on restoring the fundamentals of stability, safety, dignity and economic development so they can finally have the better life their children really do deserve after all these decades of horror.”
To do this, he argued, Palestinians should get behind his Gaza plan, which would see him head up a so-called “Peace Board” overseeing an interim administration.
This plan was, he said, “unbelievably popular” with the international community, in particular wealthy US allies among the Arab and Muslim countries of the broader Middle East.
“If we do it, we’ll do it right, and we have unbelievable power and wealth because you’re going to need wealth. You’re going to need wealth to rebuild things, and they have wealth like few people have wealth,” he said.