Donald Trump has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm, while offering full support to Binyamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the Israeli prime minister in Florida.
Mr Trump also said on Monday the United States could support another major strike on Iran were it to resume rebuilding its ballistic missile or nuclear weapons programmes.
The trip by Mr Netanyahu to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence came amid a new push by officials in Washington to force concessions from Israel to allow progress towards the second phase of a Gaza peace plan, which in October halted the devastating two-year-long war.
In a display of mutual admiration, Mr Netanyahu announced the US president would be awarded the Israel prize, the country’s highest civilian honour, which since its inception in the 1950s has never before been given to a non-Israeli person.
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Asked if he and Mr Netanyahu had discussed Israel pulling back troops before Hamas fully disarmed, Mr Trump told reporters: “If they don’t disarm as they agreed to do – they agreed to it – then there’ll be hell to pay for them and we don’t want that, we’re not looking for that. But they have to disarm within a fairly short period of time.”
He described the question of Israel withdrawing its forces as “a separate subject”, adding only: “We’ll talk about that.”
Last week the US news outlet Axios reported that the Trump administration wanted to announce the Palestinian technocratic government for Gaza and the international stabilisation force as soon as possible and that senior Trump officials were growing exasperated “as Netanyahu has taken steps to undermine the fragile ceasefire and stall the peace process”.
But Mr Trump appeared to show no such qualms after Monday’s meeting. He said he was “not concerned about anything that Israel is doing” and “Israel has lived up to the plan, 100%.”
He repeatedly pointed the finger at Hamas, saying “it’ll be horrible for them” if they failed to disarm. “It’s going to be really, really bad for them, and I don’t want that to happen. But they made an agreement that they were going to disarm. And you couldn’t blame Israel,” he said.
Hamas retains large quantities of small arms but only a fraction of the heavy weapons that enabled its surprise attack into southern Israel in 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 abducted.
More than 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed in the ensuing Israeli offensive and vast swathes of Gaza reduced to ruins. About 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the October ceasefire.
In recent weeks, Hamas has successfully established its authority over the parts of Gaza it controls with a series of executions, raids and beatings targeting rival power brokers, collaborators with Israel and criminal gangs. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is said to now live in the Hamas-controlled zone.
The Islamist militant organisation has proposed some solutions to allow some of its weapons to be put into storage but has refused to accept full disarmament.
Hamas’s armed wing reiterated on Monday that it would not surrender its weapons.
Mr Trump claimed that other countries that supported the peace deal would “go in and wipe out Hamas” if it fails to hold up its end of the bargain.
Speaking beside Mr Netanyahu following a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, Mr Trump also suggested Tehran may be working to restore its weapons programmes after a massive US strike in June.
“I’ve been reading that they’re building up weapons and other things, and if they are, they’re not using the sites we obliterated, but possibly different sites,” Mr Trump told reporters during a press conference.
“We know exactly where they’re going, what they’re doing, and I hope they’re not doing it because we don’t want to waste fuel on a B-2,” he added, referring to the bomber used in the earlier strike. “It’s a 37-hour trip both ways. I don’t want to waste a lot of fuel.
“Iran may be behaving badly. It hasn’t been confirmed. But if it’s confirmed, look, they know the consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time.” Pressed for evidence, he said: “This is just what we hear, but usually where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
Russia on Tuesday urged all parties to refrain from escalation over Iran, however. Moscow has cultivated closer ties with Tehran since the start of its war in Ukraine.
“We believe that it is necessary to refrain from any steps that could escalate tensions in the region, and we believe that, first and foremost, dialogue with Iran is necessary,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. He said Russia would continue to cultivate close ties with Iran.
Mr Trump has broached a potential nuclear deal with Tehran in recent months.
Iran, which fought a 12-day war with Israel in June, said last week that it had conducted missile exercises for the second time this month.
Mr Netanyahu said last week that Israel was not seeking a confrontation with Iran, but was aware of the reports, and said he would raise Tehran’s activities with Mr Trump.
Mr Trump and Mr Netanyahu earlier held a lunch meeting inside Mar-a-Lago along with their delegations.
Speaking to reporters before the meeting, Mr Trump falsely said “just about” every hostage was released because of him and his team, whereas “none” were released during the Joe Biden administration.
In fact, Hamas released a total of 138 hostages as a result of deals that Biden’s administration helped broker, according to the Snopes fact-checking site.
An Israeli official in Mr Netanyahu’s circle told Reuters that the prime minister would demand that Hamas return the remains of all hostages in Gaza, as required under the ceasefire deal, before moving to the next stages of Mr Trump’s plan.
A second phase of the peace plan calls for an interim authority made up of non-aligned Palestinian technocrats to govern the Palestinian territory, and an international stabilisation force of thousands of troops to be deployed. Israel has significant concerns about both.
For Mr Netanyahu, who faces an election within 10 months, the prospect of Iran repairing the damage inflicted on its nuclear programme in its short war with Israel and the US this summer and building up its ballistic missile capabilities is another priority.
The Israeli prime minister may be hoping for a political boost from his latest meeting with Mr Trump, whom he again praised as Israel’s greatest friend.
Mr Netanyahu said: “We decided to break a convention – or create a new one – and that is to award the Israel prize, which in almost our 80 years we’ve never awarded it to a non-Israeli, and we’re going to award it this year to president Trump ... for his tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people.”
It was a second consolation prize for Mr Trump, who missed out on this year’s Nobel peace prize but received a Fifa peace prize – dismissed by critics as a cynical ploy by world football’s governing body to curry favour.
As if returning the compliment, Mr Trump claimed he had spoken to the Israeli president, Yitzhak Herzog, who told him that a pardon for Mr Netanyahu in his long-running corruption trial was “on its way”. Mr Trump said: “He’s a wartime prime minister who’s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?”
Asked about Mr Trump’s remarks, Mr Herzog’s office said the Israeli president had not had any conversations with the US president since a pardon request was submitted several weeks ago, Reuters reported. – Guardian, Reuters
