President Donald Trump addressed Israel’s Knesset on Monday in a speech both solemn and soaring — a moment that crowned his administration’s landmark Israel–Hamas peace deal.
The address marked more than policy; it marked passage — from war to something like peace, from dread to the first glimmer of a different age.
“This is the end of an age of terror and death and the beginning of the age of faith and hope and of God,” Trump said. “It’s the start of a grand concord and lasting harmony for Israel and all the nations of what will soon be a truly magnificent region. I believe that so strongly, this is the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
He turned, then, to the faces of the freed.
“After two harrowing years and darkness and captivity, 20 courageous hostages are returning to the glorious embrace of their families, and it is glorious,” he said.
“Twenty-eight more precious loved ones are coming home at last to rest in this sacred soil for all of time and after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today, the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still.”
It was, in tone and in timing, a benediction — a speech about peace that sounded, at last, like peace itself.
Watch the full historic address below:
