Dave Davies

Nesper.

Hope Wilson is our consulting visual producer.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.

This is Fresh Air.

This week began with outbursts of celebration as the last 20 surviving Israeli hostages in Gaza were returned to their families and nearly 2,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons were released.

That was all part of the ceasefire agreement which finally halted two years of war in Gaza, the conflict sparked by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Our guest today, Aaron David Miller, spent years in the U.S.

State Department trying to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians, working under Democratic and Republican presidents.

He says that in bringing this ceasefire agreement to fruition, President Donald Trump dealt with Israeli leaders in ways no other president has.

He says Trump's transactional approach to politics and diplomacy probably helped in this case.

Today we'll look at how the ceasefire came to be and consider the challenges that remain for Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Aaron David Miller spent 25 years in the State Department, playing a key role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s.

He's received the State Department's Distinguished Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.

He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of five books.

We recorded our conversation yesterday.

Aaron David Miller, welcome to Fresh Air.

David, it's great to be here with you.

I want to begin with an excerpt of President Trump's speech at the Israeli Knesset on Monday.

Let's listen.

And that's President Trump with a pretty expansive view of the accomplishment here.