United States President Donald Trump has warned that he would endorse attacks on Hamas, effectively breaking the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian group, if it continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza,
Al Jazeera reports.
“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Thursday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
In an interaction with reporters later, Trump qualified that threat to make clear that US forces would not be entering Gaza.
“It’s not going to be us,” Trump said. “We won’t have to.”
“There are people very close, very nearby that will go in and they’ll do the trick very easily, but under our auspices,” the US president said, in an apparent reference to Israel, without naming the country.
The threats against Hamas appear to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week suggested that he was fine with the group’s crackdown on gangs in the Palestinian territory.
“They did take out a couple of gangs that were very bad, very, very bad gangs,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “And they did take them out, and they killed a number of gang members. And that didn’t bother me much, to be honest with you. That’s OK.”
There have been deadly clashes reported between Hamas and armed clan members in Gaza, who have been accused of looting humanitarian aid and working for Israel.
After the fighting on Sunday, the Interior Ministry in Gaza issued a general amnesty for gang members who did not participate in the bloodshed.
