Hope and doubt gave way to exhilaration and celebration yesterday. Twenty living Israeli hostages crossed the border from Gaza into freedom after 738 days in captivity. A busload of released Palestinian prisoners arrived in the West Bank to raucous crowds. And Donald Trump, the US president who hammered through the ceasefire deal, basked in praise before the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

“Today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still,” Trump said. “And the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace.” He hailed the ceasefire as more than a temporary truce, calling it “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”

In a region where the United States has had little diplomatic success in recent decades, the President can fairly claim a generational accomplishment. At the same time, this represents the first phase of what will be an arduous process. Whether this chapter leads to an enduring peace depends on Trump’s continuing personal involvement and America’s role as the peace deal’s main guarantor.

Trump will become the head of a new “Board of Peace”, with former British prime minister Tony Blair playing a central role. The board will handle the redevelopment of Gaza and oversee the transition to a new government in the enclave. About 200 US troops are being deployed to an airbase in southern Israel. They will be assisted by troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

This is not without risk. When Ronald Reagan deployed Marines to oversee the evacuation of Palestinian fighters from Beirut in 1983, a suicide bombing killed 241 US service members. Trump Administration officials have been assuring Americans that there will be no boots on the ground in Gaza.

There are other outstanding questions about disarming Hamas and guaranteeing that the terrorist group has no future role in governing Gaza. Egypt, Qatar and Turkey forced the group to accept the deal by threatening to cut off its remaining leaders. Hamas dead-enders could stage a suicide attack and fire projectiles into Israel — or against American troops.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu needs to call elections sometime in the next year, and many have wondered whether he can hold his fragile coalition together after the fighting stops. Trump joked during his speech at the Knesset that Netanyahu is not an easy guy to work with, but that’s what makes him great at his job.

This war has taken a horrific toll on both sides. Some 1,200 Israelis were killed during the sneak attack, and nearly 1,000 Israeli soldiers were killed in combat. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry estimates that more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed and says the majority have been women and children.

For decades, it was conventional wisdom that the only solution is two states coexisting peacefully side by side. But after two years of bloodshed, the prospect of a Palestinian state looks more remote than ever.

A more realistic goal is the expansion of the Abraham Accords. Trump, represented by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, brokered the normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020. One of the reasons Hamas launched the October 7 attacks was to stop additional Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, from joining. Trump said yesterday that the best way to finish the job after crushing Hamas is to get more Arab countries to join the accords.

For now, the immediate priorities will be surging humanitarian aid into Gaza and standing up a functioning Palestinian administration. That will take years, if not decades. On this first day after the war, however, Arabs, Israelis and Americans can celebrate this important step.