Trump Vows To ‘Eradicate’ Hamas As Fragile Gaza Truce Resumes

President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US would destroy Hamas if the militant group didn’t continue to honor the ceasefire with Israel, with a fragile truce resuming after a weekend of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip.

“They’re going to be nice, and if they’re not, we’re going to go and we’re going to eradicate them — if we have to, they’ll be eradicated, and they know that,” Trump said at a White House meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. 

Asked if that meant American troops on the ground in Gaza, Trump said it didn’t and that he would just ask Israel to go back in “and take care of it.” However, he added that “right now, we haven’t said that. We’re going to give it a little chance, and hopefully there will be a little less violence.” 

His comments came after a weekend punctuated by deadly Hamas ambushes and Israeli airstrikes, with each side accusing the other of breaching the agreement brokered by the Trump administration earlier this month.

White House mediators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived in Israel on Monday and quickly went into meetings intended to solidify the truce. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said US Vice President JD Vance was due on Tuesday. 

Late on Sunday, the Israel Defense Forces said they had “begun renewed enforcement of the ceasefire” and warned they would “respond firmly to any violation.”

Israel launched strikes against Hamas in Gaza and suspended aid shipments on Sunday after blaming the Iran-backed militant group for an ambush that killed two soldiers in the southern part of the strip. The IDF said it responded by hitting weapons-storage facilities and other sites. It also said it had dismantled several kilometers of underground tunnels.

At least some aid supplies have resumed, though the key border crossing of Rafah remains shut.

The White House expected the deal to be messy but expressed optimism that it wouldn’t collapse. Trump has presented the ceasefire as the best chance yet of ending the war in Gaza, which has devastated the Palestinian territory and destabilized the wider Middle East.

“It’s going to be complicated,” Vance told reporters on Sunday. “It’s going to have hills and valleys.”

Hamas said it remained committed to the truce and that it had lost contact with, and therefore couldn’t be held responsible for, any Palestinian fighters operating in Rafah. 

Under Trump’s plan, Hamas will disarm and cede what remains of its governance to a foreign-supervised alternative Palestinian administration. Hamas has yet to agree to those conditions, which are meant to form a key part of the next stage of negotiations to formally end the conflict.

In the initial agreement, Hamas said it would release all 48 hostages it held and the IDF would begin its withdrawal. 

All 20 living hostages were freed a week ago, alongside almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Yet Hamas has only released the remains of 12 deceased captives. It says it needs specialist help to locate the others amid the rubble of Gaza, but Israel accuses the group of stalling.

Israeli troops and tanks have so far redeployed to a “yellow line” that still leaves just over half the shattered enclave under their control. 

The official Palestinian news agency, WAFA, said the Israeli army’s Sunday strikes killed 44 people across the Gaza Strip, citing medical sources. 

In Sunday’s incident, Palestinians fired anti-armor rockets and guns at Israeli troops operating in Rafah, a southern city on the Israeli side of the yellow line, the army said. Two soldiers were injured as well as the two killed.

Aid supplies into Gaza have picked up since the ceasefire started, but not on the scale that the United Nations says is needed. A UN-backed monitor declared a famine in parts of the territory in late August, citing Israel’s blockade on essential goods such as food and medicine. Israel has denied the crisis reached the point of famine.

Trump’s deal won the support of Arab, Muslim and Western powers, several of which have voiced interest in contributing to a post-war stabilization force in Gaza.

A multinational task-force is now assembling in Israel, with military delegates from at least two other countries joining the US lead, according to an official who requested anonymity. Germany’s defense ministry said on Saturday it had sent three soldiers to the Civil Military Coordination Centre in southern Israel.

Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the US, European Union and others, triggered the war with an attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 hostage. More than 68,000 Palestinians have been killed by the war in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. More than 450 Israeli troops have been killed in Gaza combat.