President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to finalize a peace deal between Israel and Hamas and end the war in the Gaza Strip during his second term, but doesn’t place trust in anyone else to bring that about — not even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I don’t trust anybody,” Trump, 78, bluntly told Time magazine in his “Person of the Year” interview published Thursday when asked about his confidence in the Israeli leader.
Time also asked the incoming president whether he was still in favor of a two-state solution put forward by his first administration or if he would support Netanyahu annexing more territory in the West Bank.
“What I want is a deal where there’s going to be peace and where the killing stops,” Trump responded.
Trump halted Netanyahu from absorbing the West Bank during his first term as president, but seemed open to reversing course in his second go-round, noting Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre left more than 1,000 dead.
“I stopped him. But we’ll see what happens,” he said. “October 7 was a very terrible day. You know, October 7. People are forgetting about it. They don’t ever mention. It was a tragic day.”
Trump went on: “I want a long-lasting peace. I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a long-lasting peace, a peace where we don’t have an October 7 in another three years.”
“And there are numerous ways you can do it. You can do it two-state, but there are numerous ways it can be done,” he added.
Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, has previously supported the development of Israeli settlements and in a recent interview proclaimed he was open to annexing Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank.
“Well, of course,” Huckabee told Israel’s Army Radio in a mid-November interview about the possibility of annexation, before adding: “I won’t make the policy, I will carry out the policy of the president.”
Huckabee also didn’t rule out US support for Israeli settlements in Gaza.
“I haven’t had time to process that,” he added. “I don’t want to make any comments about policy because those won’t be mine to make.”
Trump’s overall assessment of the war was that it will be easier to solve that the Ukraine-Russia war.
He’s met with Netanyahu at his estate at Mar-a-Lago and has long vowed he would bring peace to the Middle East.
“As we speak, things are happening very productively on the Middle East,” Trump told Time. “I think the Middle East is going to get solved. I think it’s more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine, but I think it’s, it’s, it’s easier to solve.”
