00:00Thank you, Steve. And I have to say one of the great honors for me of being able to work on this has been working with Steve, who really is as brilliant as he is.
00:08His heart is tremendous. It's a lot of fun to be with. And even in some of these very difficult moments where we didn't think things were happening, working together really was an amazing treat.
00:19I'm going to go down today just through a couple of quick slides just to show you the progress that's been made in the last couple of months.
00:24It was just over 100 days ago that we got the final deal done and everyone was celebrating and joyous about the hostages coming home and the end to this long war that nobody thought was possible.
00:34And Steve and I were panicking, saying, what do we do next? You know, how do you implement peace?
00:38And as you guys know, peace is a different deal than a business deal because you're changing a mindset.
00:43And in Israel, there was two years of very intense war. For the people in Gaza, there was more than just two years of war.
00:49They had 20 years of hopelessness being ruled by a terrorist organization. For the people in the Middle East, their hearts were pulled by this.
00:55And throughout the entire world, it really was weighing on us. And so we needed to think about what do we do next?
01:00How do we change the habits? How do we change the behaviors? And we really got to work right away.
01:05And the team that Steve thanked, including the White House team and the team, the volunteers, it's really been an incredible effort, very entrepreneurial.
01:12And we really did it in the way. I've been working now with President Trump for 10 years on politics.
01:17And what continues to amaze me is that he always takes a first principles approach and says, what's the most optimal outcome? Aim for that.
01:24Whereas politicians are always focused on the downside or what could go wrong or how to make it a little bit better.
01:29He always says, aim for the best possible and, you know, do your best to get there.
01:33And if everyone thinks it's impossible, that's even more reason why you should aim for it.
01:36And so really thank you for the leadership and the inspiration for doing this.
01:40And I think you'll see today we've achieved more than thought was possible.
01:43And our ambition is still to go for something, I think, better than most people think is possible as well.
01:49So let's see if these things work. They never usually work. Good.
01:53So quickly, I'll go through this two-year war, 90,000 tons of munitions.
01:57There's over 60 million tons of rubble there and tens of thousands of fatalities.
02:02Through the ceasefire, we were able to get to the 20-point plan.
02:05Ceasefire, release of hostages, getting the U.N. resolution passed was a huge, huge effort, really thanks to Mike Waltz and the whole team there.
02:13They did an incredible job.
02:14And we then, with the help of the U.N., we've worked very, very well with them.
02:19This is why you need a new organization like the Board of Peace to work with the U.N.
02:22I want to thank Tom Fletcher.
02:24Did an incredible job of really getting it going.
02:26We've done historic humanitarian aid.
02:28Going forward, number one thing is going to be security.
02:31Obviously, we've been working very closely with the Israelis to figure out a way through de-escalation.
02:36And the next phase is working with Hamas on demilitarization, which I'll talk about in a second.
02:40But without security, nobody's going to make investments.
02:42Nobody's going to come, you know, build there.
02:44We need investments in order to start giving jobs.
02:47We want to take these people.
02:4885% of the aid of Gaza, 85% of the GDP of Gaza has been aid for a long time.
02:53That's not sustainable.
02:54It doesn't give these people dignity.
02:56It doesn't give them hope.
02:57And so we want to use free market economy principles, a lot of what President Trump spoke about that he's doing in America.
03:02We want to bring the same mindset, the same approach to a place like Gaza to give these people the ability to thrive and have a good life.
03:11Let's see.
03:12So on the aid, I mentioned the U.N.
03:14So now people are talking about famine.
03:17100% of the food needs are met.
03:20And that's been overabundance.
03:22The cost of goods have gone down tremendously.
03:24Over 55,000 trucks have gone in and over 1.4 million pallets.
03:28And it's been the largest humanitarian effort done into a war zone that anyone's been able to tell us about.
03:34This really has been a great joint effort that everyone's been able to do.
03:37And so it's a great thing.
03:39We all just heard from Ali.
03:41We have been so impressed.
03:42Steve and I were speaking to him and the entire committee.
03:45Such bravery of these people to step up.
03:48And we've worked with the Palestinian Authority who's been helping us as well.
03:51But this committee is the first time it's a technocratic, apolitical committee.
03:55I really want to thank the Arab partners for helping us select the right people to do this.
03:59And we just need to believe in them and support them.
04:01I put this up here.
04:02It's probably a little too small for me to read.
04:03But this is really important if you saw the mission statement.
04:06So Hamas' mission statement was we need to destroy the state of Israel.
04:10That has not worked well for the people as we've seen.
04:12Their mission statement is we are committed to establishing security, restoring the essential services that form the bedrock of human dignity, such electricity, water, health care, and education, as well as cultivating a society rooted in peace, democracy, and justice, operating with the highest standards of integrity, transparency.
04:31So these are the basic things.
04:32Their goal is to have peace and to help their people, which is an obvious mission statement for a government, but actually fairly novel for Gaza.
04:40So we did a master plan.
04:41We brought in, I think, Yakhir Ghabai, who's one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.
04:47He's volunteered to do this not-for-profit, really because of his heart he wants to do this.
04:51And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza.
04:52Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential.
04:55And this is for the people of Gaza.
04:57We've developed it into zones.
04:58In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone.
05:03And then we said, you know what?
05:05Let's just plan for catastrophic success.
05:07Hamas signed a deal demilitarized.
05:08That is what we are going to enforce.
05:10People ask us what our plan B is.
05:11We do not have a plan B.
05:13We have a plan.
05:14We signed an agreement.
05:15We are all committed to making that agreement work.
05:17There's a master plan.
05:18We'll be doing it in phasing.
05:19In the Middle East, they build cities like this in, you know, two, three million people.
05:23They build this in three years.
05:24And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.
05:29Rothel will start with.
05:30This will show a lot of workforce housing.
05:31We think this could be done in two, three years.
05:33We've already started removing the rubble and doing some of the demolition.
05:36And then new Gaza.
05:37It could be a hope.
05:38It could be a destination, have a lot of industry, and really be a place that the people there can thrive, have great employment.
05:44Once this starts going, we think there should be 100% full employment and opportunity for everybody there.
05:49And we have a lot of data on what can be.
05:51But we think that this really gives the Gazan people an opportunity to live their aspirations.
05:56But it all starts with security, and it all starts with governance.
05:59Final note I'll just say on the Board of Peace, which is that all the lessons we're doing is we're basically studying the best practices from all over the world.
06:06And we're watching who does education the best, who does health care delivery the best.
06:10All these things are ā it's not secret IP.
06:13All this is IP that the Board of Peace is going to make public, and we want to encourage all the countries to be able to follow these best practices.
06:19A lot of the things that President Trump is doing in America, if they're working, we should all be copying them.
06:24If we find what's working in other countries, we should be copying them, too.
06:27And so what the Board of Peace will have the ability to do if we're sexful with Gaza is really show how do you do peace implementation,
06:33which is something that when we got this deal done, we didn't really find too much expertise or know-how on how to do it.
06:39So as we're creating this system, hopefully it's something that we can just document these learnings and make them available to all else who want to use them in the future.
06:47So demilitarization, this is something we're starting now that we have a new government in Gaza.
06:51This government will be working with Hamas on the demilitarization to really take the principles that were agreed to in the document to the next phase,
06:59and hopefully that will be successful.
07:01Without that, we can't rebuild.
07:02So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza from achieving their aspiration, and that's very important.
07:10So the next 100 days, we're going to continue to just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented.
07:15We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter,
07:19but then creating the conditions to move forward.
07:22So thank you.
07:23Final point I'll just make is this is really only possible because of the work of so many people and President Trump's great leadership.
07:30But a lot of you have been asking, how can we help?
07:33So the countries have all been incredibly generous.
07:34We'll be doing the first conference where we'll announce a lot of the contributions that will be made in a couple weeks in Washington.
07:41From the private sector, there'll be amazing investment opportunities.
07:44I know it's a little risky to be investing in a place like this, but we need you to come, take faith, invest in the people, try to be a part of it.
07:51And then finally, I'll just talk to people on the media and on the social media, which is this deal only happened because we worked with Israel.
07:59We worked with Turkey.
07:59We worked with Qatar.
08:00We worked with Saudi.
08:01We worked with Egypt.
08:03I mean, everyone worked together.
08:04We worked with UAE.
08:05We all worked together to make this happen.
08:07I see a lot of people trying to escalate, you know, criticizing Israel or Israelis criticizing Turkey or Qatar.
08:13Just calm down for 30 days.
08:14I think that the war is over.
08:16Let's do our best to try working together.
08:18Our goal here is peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.
08:21Everyone wants to live peacefully.
08:22Everyone wants to live with dignity.
08:24Let's put our efforts towards promoting those who are doing the work to build this up, like Ali and his committee.
08:29Let's focus on the positive stories and let's just calm down, turn a new chapter.
08:33And if we believe that peace is possible, then peace really can be possible.
08:37So we're going to continue to work every day.
08:39We need all of your help to do it.
08:40And again, I just really want to thank President Trump for his leadership in doing this.
08:43This would not have been possible without your commitment to this.
08:46Everyone thought it was impossible to end this war.
08:49You never gave up.
08:50You never stopped.
08:50Every time there was a setback, you told us to try harder.
08:53You gave us different ideas.
08:54And we've made several impossible things happen just in Gaza to date.
08:58And there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to make even more impossible things happen.
09:02So really thank you for your amazing leadership.
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