‘The war is over’: What to watch for as Trump heads to Israel

President Donald Trump is on his way to Israel where he is expected to receive a hero’s welcome for brokering a deal to release Israeli hostages that have been held in Gaza for more than two years.

“This is going to be a very special time,” Trump said Sunday before boarding Air Force One, noting that Israelis and Palestinians were both heralding the achievement. “Usually, if you have one cheering, the other isn’t.”

The deal, which took effect Friday, called for all hostages in Gaza to be returned and Israeli troops to start withdrawing from Gaza. In addition, roughly 2,000 Palestinians detained in Israel are being freed.

The president is slated to speak to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and then fly to Sharm El-Sheikh for a peace summit. The administration hopes that the hostage release and ceasefire, the first phase of Trump’s 20-point plan, is the start of a more lasting peace.

“The war is over,” Trump said aboard Air Force One, predicting that the rebuilding of Gaza will start almost immediately. “The ceasefire is going to hold.”

Trump even suggested he might visit Gaza one day.

But even as the White House is publicly exuberant, top officials remain cautiously optimistic, noting that any truce is extremely fragile.

“Everyone is extremely confident that we’ll see this through,” said a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. “But obviously cautiously optimistic is a wise way to describe how everyone feels, until we physically see the hostages released. Once that happens, as Steve [Witkoff] and Jared [Kushner] have already said, it creates a lot of momentum and trust amongst all parties to move forward with the next phase of the deal.”

Here are four things to watch on Trump’s trip:

The prisoner exchange: It is believed that 20 Israeli hostages remain alive but their condition is unknown and could provoke outrage, especially among the hard right in Israel. In February, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Hamas with elimination following the release of three emaciated hostages.

The Trump administration has amplified the gratitude toward Trump seen in Tel Aviv over the weekend — but if that jubilation is newly tempered by grief and anger, it would cast a pall over the trip.

Israel expects the first hostages to be released around 8 a.m, local time. The plan is for Hamas to turn them over to the Red Cross, which will take them into Israel and hand them over to the Israeli military.

Meanwhile, Hamas is expecting Israel to release roughly 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and another 1,700 Gazans imprisoned since the war began in 2023.

Pressure campaign: Trump has said for months that a key goal is getting the hostages home. But that’s just one part of his much larger proposal. It remains to be seen how much pressure the president is willing to apply to Israel and Hamas in the coming days and months to carry out the remainder of that 20-point plan.

There are key questions — whether Hamas will disarm, who will rule in Gaza — that need to be answered. Hamas has said it will hand over control of Gaza to an independent Palestinian technocratic committee but what that looks like is not clear. And whether Israel will support it is unknown.

Trump said Hamas has approval to stay armed for a “period of time “ and did not reject the idea that they’d be part of a future Palestinian police force.

“They do want to stop problems,” Trump said.

Trump could use his public remarks to remind the world that there is much that needs to be done for the peace to last or he could focus on what has already been accomplished.

Aid to Gaza: Agencies are awaiting the green light to flood Gaza with aid. On Sunday morning, trucks carrying humanitarian supplies crossed the border into the Gaza Strip after the U.N.’s humanitarian office said Israel had allowed aid to again flow to the enclave, provided the ceasefire agreement holds.

Germany is among the countries quietly pressing Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. Berlin is urging that additional aid trucks be admitted and that the registration process for non-governmental organizations operating in the enclave be streamlined. It is also pushing for the swift reconstruction of Gaza.

American troops: The Trump administration is deploying roughly 200 troops to support the peace effort in Gaza and monitor the cease-fire. Trump hasn’t stated publicly exactly what their role will be or how long they might be in Israel. The administration has made clear that there will be no boots on the ground in Gaza.

“They’re going to monitor the terms of the ceasefire,” Vice President JD Vance said Sunday. “That’s everything from ensuring that the Israeli troops are at the agreed-upon line, ensuring that Hamas is not attacking innocent Israelis, doing everything that they can to ensure the peace that we’ve created actually sustains and endures. But the idea that we’re going to have troops on the ground in Gaza, in Israel — that is not our intention.”

Dasha Burns, Tim Rohn, Lennart Pfahler and Megan Messerly contributed to this report.