United States President Donald Trump is heading to the Middle East on Sunday as he looks to assert his perceived role as a peacemaker in the region after the Gaza ceasefire deal.
The visit would come days after the Nobel Peace Prize committee overlooked Trump’s public campaigning for the award and handed it to right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
The White House has bemoaned the snub, accusing the Norwegian Nobel Committee of putting “place politics over peace”.
But in the Middle East, Trump is likely to be showered with praise from his hosts and credited with securing an end to the war in Gaza and the release of Israeli captives in the territory.
The White House said on Friday that Trump will depart for the Middle East on Sunday night, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher. The US president will first arrive in Israel, where he will make an address on Monday, before continuing on to Egypt for an official signing ceremony on the Gaza deal, Fisher reported from Washington DC.
Israel and Hamas have already lauded Trump’s role in the negotiations.
But analysts stress that for the deal to turn into long-term peace in Gaza, rather than another brief truce, the US president must pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against restarting the bombardment after the Israeli captives are released.
“I think that Donald Trump wants to oversee this very closely, and I think he wants to continue to send the message to Netanyahu that this is it. At least, that’s what I’m hoping,” said Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.
“I assume he’s going to go and say very nice things about Benjamin Netanyahu; that’s what he always does publicly. But let’s hope, let’s hope, that he’s going to apply pressure.”
While Trump is taking much of the credit for the deal, experts say other factors pushed the truce over the line, more than two years into the brutal Israeli assault that United Nations investigators have concluded is a genocide.
