In a previous article, I noted that Hamas was testing President Trump’s patience by declaring it was postponing hostage releases indefinitely due to phony claims that Israel violated the cease-fire agreement. Well, Trump has responded by throwing down the gauntlet: If Hamas does not release the hostages by noon on Saturday, he now says, “all hell is gonna break out.”
Trump, critically, is not saying that Hamas has to agree to release the next batch of a few hostages under the current cease-fire agreement. No, he is saying all of the roughly 70 of them who still remain (a mix of those dead and alive). He declared, “Not in dribs and drabs — not two, and one, and three, and four, and two.”
While we still don’t know what “hell” is going to mean, beyond, perhaps, finally allowing Israel to take the gloves off against Hamas, this tells us some things as well as raises some questions.
One, there was a lot of fear after Steve Witkoff pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into signing on to phase one of Joe Biden’s Gaza cease-fire deal that the new administration might push Israel into agreeing to future phases of the deal, which would essentially mean Israel giving up on its war against Hamas.
Trump’s comments today should leave little doubt that he has determined that a deal in which hostages are released gradually, a few a week, allowing Hamas to play games, is a rotten one. Based on his comments yesterday, it’s clear that he was moved by the images of the emaciated hostages who were released over the weekend, and he will no longer confine himself to the Biden framework.
Two, we finally get to see how strong U.S. support for Israel will change future stages of the war. Biden’s muddled message — sometimes claiming he supported Israel, other times playing into Hamas’s hands by chastising Israel for its conduct of the war — no doubt prolonged the war and put more lives at risk, because Hamas always believed that it could use Biden to pressure Israel into more concessions. Now, that dynamic has been replaced. Trump is saying if Hamas doesn’t turn over the hostages, Israel will get to take the gloves off with full American backing.
Three, this puts Netanyahu in a tricky position. Since the beginning of the war, there was always a natural tension between “bring them home” and “destroy Hamas.” The dream was of course that Israel could destroy Hamas, and in doing so, rescue all the hostages. But that has proven difficult in an urban warfare scenario with hostages spread out — kept within a vast network of tunnels, in civilian apartment buildings, and even in U.N. facilities. On the other end of the spectrum, prioritizing the release of hostages over all other war aims risks allowing Hamas to remain in power as part of some final cease-fire deal.
Now, Trump is essentially saying, this must reach its natural end point. In a way, it is not only a challenge to Hamas, but to Netanyahu. Now he finally has the green light that has been denied him since October 7. But it comes with the risk that Hamas, seeing any path to a negotiated settlement cut off, will begin shooting ISIS-style execution videos of the hostages.
It’s possible that Hamas will simply release some hostages over the weekend and claim that it is abiding by the cease-fire agreement that was signed with Israel, thus putting pressure on Netanyahu to keep the cease-fire at least until the current six-week phase expires.
