President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to finalise a peace deal between Israel and Hamas and bring an end to the conflict in the Gaza Strip during his second term while expressing little trust in anyone else to achieve this goal — including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I don’t trust anybody,” Trump said in an interview with Time magazine, where he was named “Person of the Year.”
When asked if he still supported the two-state solution proposed during his first administration or would back Netanyahu’s annexation of the West Bank, Trump emphasised his focus on peace rather than specific frameworks. “What I want is a deal where there’s going to be peace and where the killing stops,” he said.
During his first term, Trump blocked Netanyahu from annexing the West Bank, but he now appears open to reconsidering, citing the October 7 Hamas attacks that killed over 1,000 people. “I stopped him. But we’ll see what happens,” Trump noted. “October 7 was a very terrible day… a tragic day.”
Trump reiterated his desire for a “long-lasting peace,” though he acknowledged the difficulty of achieving such an outcome.
“I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a peace where we don’t have an October 7 in another three years,” he said. He added that peace could be reached through various approaches, including the two-state solution.
Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, has previously supported Israeli settlement expansion and recently signalled openness to annexing Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank.
Huckabee stated in a mid-November interview that while he would implement Trump’s policies, he wouldn’t rule out U.S. backing for settlements in Gaza, though he admitted he hadn’t yet formed a firm stance on the issue.
Reflecting on the conflict’s broader implications, Trump expressed optimism about resolving the Middle East crisis, which he described as ultimately more solvable than the Ukraine-Russia war.
“As we speak, things are happening very productively in the Middle East,” Trump said. “I think the Middle East is going to get solved.”
