President Trump said he’s still confident the peace deal he brokered between Israel and Hamas will hold after a recent spike in hostilities — with the commander in chief warning the terrorist group to “behave” or be “terminated.”
Israel said the fragile cease-fire was back on Wednesday after it carried out a series of extensive airstrikes across Gaza that reportedly killed dozens of terror operatives, which came after Hamas allegedly killed two Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Tuesday.
While Trump defended the retaliatory strikes in Gaza, the president said that the cease-fire will hold regardless of the repeated violations against his peace plan.
“Nothing’s going to jeopardize that,” Trump told reporters of the tenuous truce. “You have to understand, Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave.”
“They’re on the rough side, but they said they would be good,” he added. “And if they’re good, they’re going to be happy, and if they’re not good, they’re going to be terminated.
“Their lives will be terminated. And they understand that.”
The president noted that it would be “very easy” to take out the terrorist group, which has rebuffed calls from the Trump administration to disarm and cede its hold on Gaza to make way for a new government.
“We made a deal with them where they were going to behave, and they have to behave. If they don’t behave, they get taken out,” Trump reiterated.
It was the latest threat from the president levied against Hamas, which stands accused of repeatedly violating the terms of the cease-fire deal with Tuesday’s attack on Israeli soldiers and a botched hostage release.
The violations prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to order a “series of significant strikes” on Gaza, which targeted Hamas compounds and terror cells.
More than 30 high-ranking Hamas commanders were killed in the strike, including members who took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, according to the IDF.
The heavy strikes left at least 104 people dead, including 46 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians in its death toll.
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