President Donald Trump holds a signed document during a summit to support ending the more than two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza after a breakthrough ceasefire deal, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.
| Photo Credit: AP
U.S. President Donald Trump hailed a “tremendous day for the Middle East [West Asia]” as he and regional leaders signed a declaration on Monday (October 13, 2025) meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners.
Arriving to a hero’s welcome earlier in Israel, Mr. Trump had said “This is a great day. This is a new beginning,” Asked if the two-year Gaza war was over, he said: “Yes.”
Also read: Gaza Peace Summit LIVE
Mr. Trump sat down at a resort in Sharm el-Sheikh with more than two dozen world leaders to discuss the deal. The U.S. President along with leaders of Egypt, Qatar and Turkiye signed the declaration as guarantors to the Gaza deal.
“The document is going to spell out rules and regulations and lots of other things,” Mr. Trump said before signing, repeating twice that “it’s going to hold up.”
As part of Mr. Trump’s plan to end the Gaza war, Hamas on Monday freed the last 20 surviving hostages it held after two years of captivity in Gaza. In exchange, Israel released 1,968 mostly Palestinian prisoners held in its jails.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Hamas is also due to return the bodies of 27 hostages who died or were killed in captivity, as well as the remains of a soldier killed in 2014 during a previous Gaza conflict.
President Donald Trump speaks during a summit to support ending the more than two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza after a breakthrough ceasefire deal.
| Photo Credit:
AP
Israel has said it does not expect all of the dead hostages to be returned on Monday.
Of the prisoners it freed in return, around 250 were security detainees, including many convicted of killing Israelis, while about 1,700 were taken into custody by the Israeli army in Gaza during the war.
On October 7, 2023, militants seized 251 hostages during Hamas’s attack on Israel, which led to the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians.
All but 47 of those hostages were freed in earlier truces, with the families of those who have remained in captivity leading lives of constant pain and worry for their loved ones.
Among the potential sticking points are Hamas’s refusal to disarm and Israel’s failure to pledge full withdrawal from the devastated territory.
The U.S. leader, however, repeatedly signalled he was confident the ceasefire would hold, saying at a joint appearance with Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh that talks on the next steps of the plan were underway.
“It’s started, as far as we’re concerned, phase 2 has started,” he said.
“The phases are all a little bit mixed in with each other,” he added.
At his appearance with Mr. Sisi, he lauded the Egyptian leader as having been “very instrumental” in talks with Hamas.
Mr. Sisi, for his part, said Mr. Trump was the “only one capable of bringing peace to our region”.
Mr. Trump also briefly met with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas at the summit, which representatives of Israel and Hamas did not attend.
(With inputs from Reuters in Jerusalem)
Published – October 14, 2025 12:43 am IST
