Trump, world leaders open Gaza Peace Summit in Egypt

New Delhi, Oct 13: After concluding his visit to Israel, US President Donald Trump arrived in Egypt on Monday evening to join world leaders at the Gaza Peace Summit, aimed at consolidating the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and shaping a lasting peace framework for the war-torn region.

Trump was received on the red carpet by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at Sharm el-Sheikh, where the summit is being held. The two leaders exchanged brief remarks before opening the high-level meeting. Welcoming delegates to the “city of peace,” Sisi hailed the ceasefire as an “unprecedented accomplishment” and praised Trump’s personal role in ending the conflict, calling him “the only one capable of bringing about an end to the war in Gaza.”

Among those attending the summit are British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, along with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

India is represented by Kirti Vardhan Singh, Union Minister of State for Environment, Forest and Climate Change and External Affairs, who arrived in Cairo earlier in the day as the special representative of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a post on X, Singh confirmed his participation, saying he was attending the summit “as the special representative of Prime Minister Modi.”

Trump told reporters that the Middle East was entering a “new chapter,” describing the ceasefire as the “eighth war” he has helped end. He praised Qatar’s role in facilitating the truce and said a supervisory body called the ‘Board of Peace’ would soon be established to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction, which he likened to a “demolition site.”

During the summit, Sisi said Egypt would work to ensure that the bodies of Israeli hostages are returned and that the ceasefire remains in place. Asked when phase two of peace negotiations would begin, Trump responded, “It’s started,” adding that “a lot of clean-up” was still required in Gaza.

For Trump, who has received international praise for brokering the ceasefire, the challenge now is to secure a durable and enforceable peace framework — a task that could define what he called “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”