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The final 20 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza by Hamas have returned home as part of an emotional exchange that also freed nearly 2,000 Palestinians from prisons in Israel, as part of Donald Trump’s push to end the two-year war in the Palestinian enclave.
The landmark agreement represented the US president’s most significant foreign policy success of his second term, which he used to lay out his grand vision for broader peace in the Middle East.
The long-awaited handovers on Monday sparked jubilation in both Israel and Palestine, and came as Trump visited Israel and Egypt on a whistle-stop trip to tout a 20-point plan to end the deadliest war in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a speech to the Israeli parliament during which he received multiple standing ovations, Trump set out his postwar vision, hailing the “historic dawn of a new Middle East” and “the start of a grand concord and lasting harmony” between Israel and its neighbours.
“The forces of chaos, terror and ruin that have plagued the region for decades now stand weakened, isolated and totally defeated,” the US president said.
“Now it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”
Trump also extended an olive branch to Iran, which the US and Israel bombed during a 12-day war earlier this year, saying it “would be great” to strike a peace deal with Tehran.
The plan for ending the war in Gaza was unveiled by Trump last month, with a first phase centred on a ceasefire and hostage exchange, and a second aimed at securing a permanent end to the fighting, in which Hamas would disarm, Israel would withdraw from Gaza and an international stabilisation force would be deployed in the Palestinian enclave.
Although Israel and Hamas agreed the first stage of the plan, they have yet to agree the second, which diplomats say will be far more complicated given the huge differences between Israel’s and Hamas’s positions.
The first part of Trump’s plan began smoothly on Monday, with Hamas releasing the 20 living Israeli hostages — all men in their twenties, thirties and forties — in two groups in northern and southern Gaza.
Soon afterwards, Israel freed more than 1,900 Palestinians, including 250 who had been serving life sentences, and more than 1,700 Gazans who Israel had seized and held without charge since the start of the war in the enclave two years ago.
But in an indication of the challenges of reaching any agreement, the group representing the families of hostages accused Hamas of breaching the first phase of the deal when the militant group announced it would release the bodies of only four of the 28 dead hostages on Monday.
“We demand all 28 hostages back. We will not give up anyone,” the group said in a statement, calling for the implementation of the peace agreement to be suspended until all 28 bodies had been returned.
However, in an appearance later on Monday at a “peace summit” convened by the US and Egypt in Sharm el-Sheikh, Trump said talks on the second phase of his peace plan had already begun and insisted his deal represented the “first steps” to peace.
Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi thanked Trump for his efforts at brokering regional peace, saying the deal was the region’s “last hope for peace”. Sisi also affirmed that a two-state solution was the “only way” to consolidate peace and said Palestinians had the right to live in an independent state side by side with Israelis.
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