President Donald Trump said he thought a ceasefire in Gaza could be “close,” perhaps in the next week. “I just spoke with some of the people involved. It’s a terrible situation that’s going,” the president told reporters at the White House on Friday afternoon.

Witkoff assisted aides of former U.S. President Joe Biden in mediating the ceasefire and prisoner release agreement in Gaza shortly before Trump took office in January. However, the ceasefire was violated by Israel in March when the country launched a wave of sudden bomb attacks across the region.

Arab governments emphasized this week that a main cause of instability in the region — the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict — must be resolved.

After 12 days of intense strikes between Israel and Iran – punctuated by the United States’ bombing of Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend and Tehran’s performative retaliation – a US-brokered ceasefire is holding.

But that is what happened in the middle of the night on June 23rd, the 12th day of a war between Israel and Iran. Donald Trump announced the end of the war on social media (where else?), saying that the combatants had begged him to make peace.