What a wonderful week for the world. Peace. The end of the terrible war in Gaza. Well done to Donald Trump. Together with the Abraham Accords secured during his first term he has done more than anyone living to secure stability and prosperity for the people of the Middle East. Matthew 5:9 is apt: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

It is appalling how Trump has been miscast as a warmonger who would make the world a more dangerous place. That’s done purely out of spite by those who hate him. Quite the opposite is true. It has been perfectly obvious to anyone who would care to think properly that Trump is deeply opposed to the idea that politicians send tens of thousands of young people to kill each other in forever wars in far-flung places. It is what has always distinguished him from many American conservatives.

Surely Trump is now a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize? If he can use the momentum of the Gaza peace to end the war in Europe he’ll be the greatest peacemaker since the end of the Second World War.

Qatar and Turkey were central to getting it all done. They applied vast pressure to Hamas to give it all up. Had Hamas dug in, Qatar and Turkey would likely have cast them into the wilderness and cut them off, leaving the last of the terror group’s leadership to be picked off by the Israelis (if they were lucky) or by the secret police of their Arab brethren if they were not.

The missile strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar a month back was a clever chess move. It showed both Qatar and Turkey what would follow if they didn’t cut Hamas off.

Where were the South Africans?

Where were the South Africans this week? Nowhere. They didn’t even turn up at Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday evening where Trump and Sisi (the Egyptian leader) hosted the final signing of the peace. Scores of other nations were there. Much of the Arab world was there, and Europe, and Asia.

The truth is the South Africans were not welcome there as they are not seen as honest brokers interested in peace but as proxy agents for Iran who remain unfailingly loyal to Hamas and who saw the peace not as a great moment to celebrate but as a setback and humiliating defeat.

That’s a tragedy. Under better management and with better leadership at foreign affairs South Africa could even have brokered the peace pact. It used to be so well positioned to do that as a leading liberal democracy that retained close ties to the Palestinian people. That together with its own history of negotiating peace at home in 1994 and the imagery of Mandela and de Klerk used to afford it real diplomatic heft. Just think how great it would have been for the country to have secured the deal this week. Alas, all that potential has been thrown away through spite, malice, ineptitude, ignorance, and corruption – to an extent that it was not even welcome as an observer at the final signing.

Isn’t the whole of the final chapter of the African National Congress (ANC) exactly this – every opportunity thrown away. That is why the ANC is now a 40% party on its way to 30%. Anyway, as the party fades South Africa moves on.

What now?

What now for the Palestinian people? Relief that the worst of it is over meets the reality of the wretched bombed-out ruin that remains of their home. The bombs have stopped falling but all the death and trauma that now surrounds them wherever they walk or look will never go away for those who lived through it. You cannot recover psychologically from that sort of thing.

The truth is no one wants the Palestinians or cares about them. The Egyptians view them as a menace to be kept safely locked up in Gaza. Jordan, which by rights should be the Palestinian state, wants nothing to do with them. The balance of the Arab world is only too grateful that Israel deals with the problem. Iran sees them as pawns to be sent to their deaths.

Now they must place their hope in Trump who will chair the board of the committee that must rebuild Gaza. Maybe he will help them, because he is the only one who has shown any indication that he cares enough to do so.