Israel’s victory over the Islamic Republic of Iran opened opportunities for a “dramatic expansion” of Jerusalem’s regional peace agreements, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Thursday night.
Israel’s military “fought with strength against Iran and achieved a great victory,” Netanyahu said in remarks posted to X. “That victory opens an opportunity for a dramatic expansion of the peace agreements.”
The Israeli government, headed by Netanyahu, is “working vigorously” on expanding the circle of peace, according to the leader of the Jewish state.
“Along with the release of our hostages and the defeat of Hamas, there is a window of opportunity here that must not be wasted,” Netanyahu emphasized. “We must not waste even a single day.”
“Our Scripture says: ‘The Lord shall grant strength to His people; the Lord shall bless His people with peace,'” he said, citing Psalms 29:11.
Earlier on Thursday, the Israel Hayom daily reported that Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump had agreed in recent discussions to end the Gaza war against Hamas and expand the Abraham Accords.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, told CNBC on Wednesday that more countries will join the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized ties between Israel and several Muslim countries.
“We think we will have some pretty big announcements on countries that are coming into the Abraham Accords,” Witkoff declared, adding that one of the Trump administration’s “key objectives is that the Abraham Accords be expanded and more countries come into it.”
“We are hoping for normalization across an array of countries, maybe that people would never have contemplated coming in before,” he said.
While the Israel Hayom report also suggested that Israel would agree toward a pathway for Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu told the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on April 27 that the notion that a Palestinian state would lead to peace in the Middle East was “folly, nothing more than folly.”
“I’m saying this for the ambassadors who are here; all of you know this,” the premier said. “We just tried a Palestinian state in Gaza,” he said of the Hamas-controlled territory. “You saw what that brought, right?”
During the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists and Palestinian “civilians” murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted 251 back to the Strip, 50 of whom remain there after 628 days.