00:00SECRETARY POMPEO- Thank you, everyone, and welcome here.
00:19This is really my honor to be up here speaking.
00:23I remember when the President asked Jared and, of course, our great Secretary of State
00:29to work on something that the world thought was impossible and unattainable.
00:36But the President on this peace deal for Gaza, as on all other deals we work on on his behalf,
00:43said we had to try.
00:45And of course, we were inspired by that.
00:50We have achieved a peace deal in Gaza.
00:54We have brought the hostages home, all of the bodies except for one, and we will bring
00:59that body home too.
01:01And maybe most importantly, we have created a sense of hope for what the future can bring
01:07to Gaza and all other places where the Board of Peace will operate.
01:13And I am so honored, Mr. President, to have worked on this on your behalf.
01:19I'd like to thank some people who are here with us tonight who have done so much, done indispensable
01:29work to bring this deal together.
01:31Sheikh Mohammed, my good friend from Qatar and Ali Al-Tawadi, Haqqan, Fidan and Ibrahim, General
01:44Hassan, and Foreign Minister Badr Abdullati, and of course, President Sisi, and Prime Minister
01:53Netanyahu, former Special Envoy Ron Dermer, and Michael Eisenberg for all that they did.
02:00I would also like to thank our core working group and members of the Board of Peace who
02:06have been working nonstop on behalf of this incredible, noble effort.
02:13They are on the clock for months on end, sacrificing time with their families and their own personal
02:18lives because they believe in the mission and the vision that the President has set out
02:23for us.
02:25I'd also like to thank those people include Tony Blair, Yakhir Gabay, Josh Grunbaum, Arie Lightstone,
02:35Leron Tunkman, Admiral Cooper, General Frank, and I probably have forgotten some along the way.
02:44And then, perhaps most importantly, I want to thank our administration.
02:48We have an incredible team.
02:50It's amazing to work for this administration.
02:52I think you see the results that we get on behalf of the President because he inspires
02:57us so much.
02:59So I'd like to thank the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, for all of
03:03his help and guidance, our Treasury Secretary, of course, the Secretary of State who we work
03:09hand in glove with, and a special thanks to our Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who is always
03:15available to us for consultation, for steering, and for all else that she does.
03:28Thank you, Steve.
03:29And I have to say, one of the great honors for me of being able to work on this has been
03:33working with Steve, who really is as brilliant as he is.
03:37His heart is tremendous.
03:38He's a lot of fun to be with.
03:40And even in some of these very difficult moments where we didn't think things would happen,
03:45working together really was an amazing treat.
03:46I'm going to go down today just through a couple of quick slides just to show you the progress
03:50that's been made in the last couple of months.
03:52It was just over 100 days ago that we got the final deal done, and everyone was celebrating
03:57and joyous about the hostages coming home and the end to this long war that nobody thought
04:01was possible.
04:02And Steve and I were panicking, saying, what do we do next?
04:05How do you implement peace?
04:06And as you guys know, peace is a different deal than a business deal because you're changing
04:10a mindset.
04:11And in Israel, there was two years of very intense war.
04:14For the people in Gaza, there was more than just two years of war.
04:17They had 20 years of hopelessness being ruled by a terrorist organization.
04:21For the people in the Middle East, their hearts were pulled by this.
04:24And throughout the entire world, it really was weighing on us.
04:26And so we needed to think about, what do we do next?
04:28How do we change the habits?
04:29How do we change the behaviors?
04:31And we really got to work right away.
04:33And the team that Steve thanked, including the White House team and the team, the volunteers,
04:38it's really been an incredible effort, very entrepreneurial.
04:41And we really did it in the way.
04:42I've been working now with President Trump for 10 years on politics, and what continues
04:46to amaze me is that he always takes a first principles approach and says, what's the most
04:50optimal outcome?
04:51Aim for that.
04:52Whereas politicians are always focused on the downside or what could go wrong or how
04:56to make it a little bit better.
04:57He always says, aim for the best possible and do your best to get there.
05:01And if everyone thinks it's impossible, that's even more reason why you should aim for it.
05:05And so really thank you for the leadership and the inspiration for doing this.
05:08And I think you'll see today we've achieved more than thought was possible, and our ambition
05:12is still to go for something, I think, better than most people think is possible as well.
05:17So let's see if these things work.
05:18They never usually work.
05:20Good.
05:21So quickly, I'll go through this two-year war, 90,000 tons of munitions.
05:25There's over 60 million tons of rubble there, and tens of thousands of fatalities.
05:30Through the ceasefire, we were able to get to the 20-point plan, the ceasefire, release
05:34of hostages.
05:35Getting the U.N. resolution passed was a huge, huge effort, really thanks to Mike Waltz
05:40and the whole team there.
05:41They did an incredible job.
05:43And we then, with the help of the U.N., we've worked very, very well with them.
05:47This is why you need a new organization like the Board of Peace to work with the U.N.
05:50I want to thank Tom Fletcher, did an incredible job of really getting it going.
05:54We've done historic humanitarian aid.
05:56Going forward, number one thing is going to be security.
05:59Obviously, we've been working very closely with the Israelis to figure out a way through
06:03de-escalation.
06:04And the next phase is working with Hamas on demilitarization, which I'll talk about in
06:07a second.
06:08But without security, nobody's going to make investments.
06:11Nobody's going to come, you know, build there.
06:12We need investments in order to start giving jobs.
06:15We want to take these people, 85% of the aid of Gaza, 85% of the GDP of Gaza has been aid
06:21for a long time.
06:22That's not sustainable.
06:23It doesn't give these people dignity.
06:24It doesn't give them hope.
06:26And so we want to use free market economy principles.
06:28A lot of what President Trump spoke about that he's doing in America.
06:30We want to bring the same mindset and the same approach to a place like Gaza to give these
06:35people the ability to thrive and have a good life.
06:38Let's see.
06:40So on the aid, I mentioned the U.N.
06:43So now, people are talking about famine, 100% of the food needs are met.
06:48And that's been overabundance.
06:50The costs of goods have gone down tremendously.
06:52Over 55,000 trucks have gone in and over 1.4 million pallets.
06:56And it's been the largest humanitarian effort done into a war zone that anyone's been able
07:01to tell us about.
07:02This really has been a great joint effort that everyone's been able to do.
07:05And so it's a great thing.
07:07We all just heard from Ali.
07:09We have been so impressed.
07:10Steve and I were speaking to him and the entire committee.
07:13Such bravery of these people to step up.
07:16And we've worked with the Palestinian Authority who's been helping us as well.
07:19But this committee is the first time it's a technocratic, apolitical committee.
07:23I really want to thank the Arab partners for helping us select the right people to do this.
07:27And we just need to believe in them and support them.
07:29I put this up here.
07:30It's probably a little too small for me to read.
07:31But this is really important if you saw the mission statement.
07:34So Hamas' mission statement was we need to destroy the state of Israel.
07:38That has not worked well for the people as we've seen.
07:39Their mission statement is we are committed to establishing security, restoring the essential
07:44services that form the bedrock of human dignity, such electricity, water, healthcare, and education,
07:51as well as cultivating a society rooted in peace, democracy, and justice, operating with
07:56the highest standards of integrity, transparency.
07:59So these are the basic things.
08:00Their goal is to have peace and to help their people, which is an obvious mission statement
08:04for a government, but actually fairly novel for Gaza.
08:08So we did a master plan.
08:09We brought in, I thank you, Kirgabai, who's one of the most successful real estate developers
08:13and brilliant people I know.
08:15He's volunteered to do this not-for-profit, really because of his heart he wants to do
08:18this.
08:19And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza.
08:20Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential.
08:23And this is for the people of Gaza.
08:25We've developed it into zones.
08:27In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and
08:31then we have a Hamas zone.
08:32And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success.
08:34Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize.
08:36That is what we are going to enforce.
08:38People ask us what our plan B is.
08:39We do not have a plan B. We have a plan.
08:41We signed an agreement.
08:43We are all committed to making that agreement work.
08:45There's a master plan.
08:46We'll be doing it in phasing.
08:47In the Middle East, they build cities like this in, you know, two, three million people.
08:51They build this in three years.
08:52And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.
08:55Rothel we'll start with.
08:57This will show a lot of workforce housing.
08:59We think this could be done in two, three years.
09:01We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.
09:04And then new Gaza.
09:05It could be a hope.
09:06It could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there
09:10can thrive, have great employment.
09:12Once this starts going, we think there should be 100 percent full employment and opportunity
09:16for everybody there.
09:17And we have a lot of data on what can be.
09:19But we think that this really gives the Gaza people an opportunity to live their aspirations.
09:24But it all starts with security, and it all starts with governance.
09:27Final note I'll just say on the Board of Peace, which is that all the lessons we're doing is
09:32we're basically studying the best practices from all over the world.
09:34And we're watching who does education the best, who does health care delivery the best.
09:38All these things are, it's not secret IP.
09:41All this is IP that the Board of Peace is going to make public.
09:43And we want to encourage all the countries to be able to follow these best practices.
09:47A lot of the things that President Trump is doing in America, if they're working,
09:51we should all be copying them.
09:52If we find what's working in other countries, we should be copying them too.
09:55And so what the Board of Peace will have the ability to do if we're sexful with Gaza
09:59is really show how do you do peace implementation, which is something that when we got this deal
10:03done, we didn't really find too much expertise or know-how on how to do it.
10:07So as we're creating this system, hopefully it's something that we can just document these
10:11learnings and make them available to all else who want to use them in the future.
10:14So demilitarization, this is something we're starting now that we have a new government in
10:19Gaza.
10:19This government will be working with Hamas on the demilitarization to really take the
10:24principles that were agreed to in the document to the next phase.
10:27And hopefully that will be successful.
10:29Without that, we can't rebuild.
10:30So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza
10:36from achieving their aspiration.
10:37And that's very important.
10:38So the next 100 days, we're going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure
10:42this is implemented.
10:43We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating
10:48the conditions to move forward.
10:49So thank you.
10:51A final point I'll just make is this is really only possible because of the work of so many
10:56people and President Trump's great leadership.
10:58But a lot of you have been asking, how can we help?
11:00So the countries have all been incredibly generous.
11:02We'll be doing the first conference where we'll announce a lot of the contributions that
11:06will be made in a couple weeks in Washington.
11:08From the private sector, there'll be amazing investment opportunities.
11:12I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come
11:15take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it.
11:19And then finally, I'll just talk to people on the media and on the social media, which is
11:24this deal only happened because we worked with Israel.
11:26We worked with Turkey.
11:27We worked with Qatar.
11:28We worked with Saudi.
11:29We worked with Egypt.
11:31I mean, everyone worked together.
11:32We worked with UAE.
11:33We all worked together to make this happen.
11:35I see a lot of people trying to escalate, you know, criticizing Israel or Israelis criticizing
11:40Turkey or Qatar.
11:41Just calm down for 30 days.
11:42I think that the war's over.
11:43Let's do our best to try working together.
11:46Our goal here is peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.
11:49Everyone wants to live peacefully.
11:50Everyone wants to live with dignity.
11:52Let's put our efforts towards promoting those who are doing the work to build this up,
11:55like Ali and his committee.
11:57Let's focus on the positive stories.
11:58And let's just calm down, turn a new chapter.
12:01And if we believe that peace is possible, then peace really can be possible.
12:05So we're going to continue to work every day.
12:06We need all of your help to do it.
12:08And again, I just really want to thank President Trump for his leadership in doing this.
12:11This would not have been possible without your commitment to this.
12:14Everyone thought it was impossible to end this war.
12:17You never gave up.
12:17You never stopped.
12:18Every time there was a setback, you told us to try harder.
12:21You gave us different ideas.
12:22And we've made several impossible things happen just in Gaza to date.
12:26And there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to make even more impossible things happen.
12:30So really, thank you for your amazing leadership.
12:40Thank you, Jared and Steve.
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