On Tuesday, a Hamas official responded to President-elect Donald Trump’s warning that there would be “all hell to pay” if Israeli hostages in Gaza weren’t released by his inauguration on January 20, 2025.
Trump didn’t mention Hamas by name in his warning but appeared to threaten US strikes on the Palestinian group, saying, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America.”
Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said Trump’s threat should be directed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing his efforts to sabotage a hostage and ceasefire deal. Israeli officials and media reports have also blamed Netanyahu for the lack of a deal.
“Hamas understands that Trump’s message is, in fact, directed primarily at Netanyahu and his government,” Naim said, according to The Palestine Chronicle.
Naim said the Netanyahu government had been using negotiations as a cover to advance its own agenda. “Netanyahu’s government must put an end to this deceptive charade,” he said.
Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was recently fired by Netanyahu, said that the prime minister sabotaged the chances of a hostage deal by demanding Israel maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border.
“I can tell you what there was not, security considerations. The IDF chief and I said there was no security reason for remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor,” Gallant told hostage families on November 7. “Netanyahu said that it was a diplomatic consideration, I’m telling you there was no diplomatic consideration.”
There are believed to be 97 Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza, and Israeli media reported back in September that Netanyahu told a Knesset committee that only half of the hostages were believed to be alive.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in October that the Israeli government was done with ceasefire talks and was instead focused on annexing portions of the Gaza Strip. There’s been some recent efforts by mediators to restart talks, but there’s no sign the effort is going anywhere, and there’s no end in sight to the daily slaughter in Gaza.
