Hamas
will have ‘hell to pay’ if it fails to disarm, Trump warns after Netanyahu
meeting
Israeli
prime minister said he will award Trump with Israel prize, highest civilian
honor, while visiting Mar-a-Lago
David
Smith in Washington and Jason Burke in Jerusalem
Mon 29
Dec 2025 23.00 GMT
Donald
Trump has warned that Hamas will have “hell to pay” if it fails to disarm while
offering full-throated support to Benjamin Netanyahu during a meeting with the
Israeli prime minister in Florida.
In a
bravura display of mutual admiration, Netanyahu announced that 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.
The trip
by 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.
Asked if
he and Netanyahu had discussed Israel pulling back troops before Hamas fully
disarmed, 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 ISF 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 Trump
himself 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.
“Our
people are defending themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as
the occupation remains,” the new spokesperson for the Ezzedine al-Qassam
Brigades, who has adopted the name of his late predecessor Abu Obeida, said in
a video statement.
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.
Trump and
Netanyahu earlier held a lunch meeting inside Mar-a-Lago along with their
delegations. Netanyahu was expected to tell Trump that Hamas must return the
remains of the last Israeli hostage left in Gaza before the next stages of the
stalled ceasefire can be implemented, Israeli officials and analysts said.
Speaking
to reporters before the meeting, 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 factchecking site.
The
family of the last person whose remains have not been returned, Ran Gvili, has
joined the Israeli prime minister’s visiting entourage and will meet officials
in Washington later this week.
An
Israeli official in 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 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 (ISF) of thousands of troops to be deployed.
Israel has significant concerns about both.
Gvili, a
24-year-old police officer, was badly wounded and then abducted during the
October 2023 Hamas raid into Israel that triggered the conflict. It is unclear
if he died of his wounds during the raid or in Gaza. Hundreds gathered on
Saturday night in Tel Aviv to demand that Israel makes no concession to advance
the ceasefire deal until his remains are returned.
Lianne
Pollak-David, a former Israeli military intelligence officer and peace
negotiator in the prime minister’s office, said the failure to return the
remains of Gvili was a serious issue. “Netanyahu and the Israelis as a people
are simply not going to accept this,” she said.
Hamas has
freed 20 living hostages and returned the bodies of 27 dead hostages since
October and some observers see the insistence on Gvili’s remains being returned
as a delaying tactic to allow Israel’s military forces to remain in the 53% of
Gaza they currently control.
Daniel
Levy, a UK-based analyst and former Israeli peace negotiator, said Netanyahu
had no intention of withdrawing further from Gaza or allowing any international
force that would deter Israeli military action.
“He feels
he has a number of cards to play yet and the remains of Gvili is the easiest
one to play now but there are others,” Levy said.
For
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.
Trump had
previously insisted that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “completely and fully
obliterated”. But on Monday he said: “I hope they’re not trying to build up
again because, if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to
eradicate that buildup.”
The
president added: “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.”
The
Israeli prime minister may be hoping for a political boost from his latest
meeting with Trump, whom he again praised as Israel’s greatest friend.
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 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, Trump claimed he had spoken to the Israeli president,
Isaac Herzog, who told him that a pardon for Netanyahu in his long-running
corruption trial was “on its way”. Trump said: “He’s a wartime prime minister
who’s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?”
Asked
about Trump’s remarks, Herzog’s office said the Israeli president had not had
any conversations with Trump since a pardon request was submitted several weeks
ago, Reuters reported.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário