It's Trump's best day

Today will go down as Donald Trump's best day since returning to the White House for a second term. Everyone he met in Israel and then in Egypt congratulated him, and all European leaders, even the most sceptical, praised him. The twenty surviving Israeli hostages were all released on time and a new future for Gaza and the Middle East was plotted by twenty world leaders at the summit in Egypt. So, all in all, everything went according to plan and now we have to wait and see whether the rest of the Trump 20-point plan works out. It took seven years from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 for the Provisional IRA finally to hand over all their weapons. By the time they had discarded their weapons, there were 1,000 rifles, two tons of Semtex explosive, dozens of heavy machineguns, seven should-launched anti-air missiles, 90 handguns and an assortment of other weaponry including flame-throwers and grenades. Hamas has much more than the IRA ever had. So it could take a long time for them to disarm, if they ever actually agree to do it. This is still one of the unknowns. But if they fail to disarm, the whole peace effort will crumble. I doubt Trump will allow that to happen and ruin his chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize next year. In which case, today is the beginning of the end of Hamas as an armed organisation.