US President Donald Trump, along with several regional leaders, signed Gaza ceasefire documents during a summit in Egypt and welcomed the release of Israeli prisoners, as Hamas denounced the “harshest forms of sadism and fascism” endured by Palestinians released from Israeli prisons.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also signed the document on Monday in the Red Sea city of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“It took us 3,000 years to get here. Can you believe it? And it will hold up. It will hold up,” Trump said during the signing of the document.
“Today is the day on which people in our region and around the world have worked, strived, hoped and prayed,” the US president said.
“Nobody thought this would happen,” Trump said, calling the Gaza cease-fire agreement “historic.”
President Trump continued his speech by saying, “After years of suffering and bloodshed, the war in Gaza is over.”
“Humanitarian aid is currently pouring in, including hundreds of truckloads of food, medical equipment and other supplies, much of which is being paid for by the people in this room,” he said.
President Trump also expressed “a tremendous amount of gratitude to the Arab and Muslim countries that have helped make this incredible progress possible.”
The Egyptian president also expressed his gratitude to President Trump as well as the leaders of Qatar and Türkiye. Subsequently, the Egyptian president reiterated his support for the Gaza plan in the hope of creating political horizons for the implementation of the so-called two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The signing ceremony took place after Hamas returned 20 surviving prisoners remaining in Gaza under the first phase of the US-brokered agreement. Four coffins containing the remains of deceased prisoners of war were also handed over. Israel also released 250 Palestinian prisoners of war and more than 1,700 Gaza Strip detainees who had been held without charge.
“The release of the prisoners is a national achievement and a glorious milestone in our struggle,” Hamas said in a statement on Monday.
“The freed prisoners revealed the most horrific forms of mental and physical torture they were subjected to over two years, in a field that represents the harshest forms of sadism and fascism in modern times,” the report said.
Palestinian resistance groups have called on human rights and humanitarian groups to take action against Israel’s “systematic crimes against prisoners of war.”
President Trump announced on October 8 that Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire and prisoner exchange plan.
The agreement was concluded after four days of indirect talks between the two countries in Sharm el-Sheikh with delegations from Turkey, Egypt and Qatar, supervised by the United States.
The second phase of the agreement envisions a new governance framework for Gaza, a security force comprised of Palestinians and armed forces from Arab and Islamic countries, and a foreign-funded reconstruction led by Arab states.
Since October 2023, Israeli military attacks have killed more than 67,800 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, most of them women and children, leaving the enclave almost uninhabitable.
RHM/Press TV