US President Donald Trump declared Friday that Hamas isn’t interested in reaching a hostage deal and signaled backing for Israel advancing its military operations against the terror group.
“Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die,” Trump told reporters outside the White House a day after the US and Israel announced that they were pulling their respective negotiating teams from Doha, where proximity talks with Hamas had been taking place for nearly three weeks.
Washington and Jerusalem fumed at Hamas over the response it submitted Thursday to the latest proposal for a 60-day Gaza truce and hostage release deal. Egypt and Qatar took a more nuanced approach, while indicating that the Hamas response indeed contained too many requests for changes to the proposal. However, they maintain that the gaps are bridgeable, an Arab diplomat and a source involved in the mediation effort told The Times of Israel on Friday.
Trump offered a grim assessment of the situation, suggesting that the U.S. might not be able to secure the release of the remaining 50 hostages — around 20 of whom are believed to still be alive.
“I said this would happen,” Trump told reporters, claiming he had predicted the current deadlock.
He acknowledged progress had been made in freeing some hostages, but added:
“When it comes down to the last 10 or 20, I don’t think Hamas will agree to any deal — because losing them means losing their leverage. And that’s basically what has happened.”
Trump went on to say:
“I think they’re going to be hunted down. It’s now at a point where Israel will have to finish the job.”
He concluded:
“They’ll have to fight and clean things up. You have to eliminate the threat,” while admitting the whole situation is “somewhat disappointing.”
More of the same?
It is unclear, however, whether additional fighting will lead to the total destruction of Hamas that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared as an essential goal of the war.
The IDF has been fighting the terror group for nearly 22 months, and Israeli officials had asserted that Trump’s entry to the Oval Office would allow for the IDF to deliver a knock-out blow.
Trump allowed Israel to collapse the previous hostage deal, in March, instead of entering the second phase that included a permanent end to the war.
Israel then launched and is now nearing the conclusion of a new offensive aimed at occupying 75 percent of the Strip in order to pressure Hamas.
For nearly three months, Israel blocked all aid from entering the Strip, in what aid organizations say helped create the current famine crisis.
The US then helped Israel establish the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which was designed to try and box Hamas out of the aid distribution process when Israel finally began to allow aid again into Gaza in late May. But GHF’s work was quickly marred by near-daily reports of deadly shootings of Palestinians seeking to pick up boxes of food.
