On his second day, Donald Trump tasked his officials to start working on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement deal between Israel and Hamas, according to reports.
The Trump administration officials acknowledged that it will not be an easy task to keep ceasefire deal going as expected. Their main challenge will be to turn the 42-day first phase of the deal into a permanent one.
“What Biden left us with is the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end,” one of the Trump official told Politico.
The revelation by officials comes a day after Trump said he is not confident whether the Gaza ceasefire deal will complete the three phases. "It's not our war, it's theirs," he said.
US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio are working on the second phase of the truce agreement. Besides them, Trump's Middle East enboy Steve Witkoff, deputy envoy Morgan Ortagus and Middle East senior director of the National Security Council Eric Trager will also play a key role in these efforts.
Waltz said Hamas should be destroyed and it should have no role in Gaza after the war.
The officials told Politico that the new administration is making it a priority to make Israel-Saudi Arabia normalisation a reality. On January 20, Trump said a normalisation agreement could be signed by the two nations by the end of 2025.