Statement appears to signal about-face from US president, who previously backed Hamas’s crackdown on Gaza gangs.
United States President Donald Trump has threatened to break the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas if the Palestinian group continues to target gangs and alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza.
“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!”
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The statement appears to signal an about-face from Trump, who earlier this week expressed support for Hamas’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 general amnesty for gang members who did not participate in the bloodshed.
In June, Israeli officials admitted to arming Gaza gangs, some of which have ties to ISIL (ISIS), in an effort to destabilise Hamas.
On Sunday, gunmen from a Gaza gang linked to Israel killed prominent Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, according to local forces.
Earlier this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned Hamas over accusations that the group executed suspected Israel collaborators, calling the purported killings a “heinous crime”.
“What happened represents a crime, a flagrant violation of human rights, and a serious assault on the principle of the rule of law,” Abbas’s office said in a statement.
Under Trump’s ceasefire plan, Hamas would disarm and end any role in the governance of Gaza. But it is not clear whether the group has agreed to these conditions.
The truce has largely held since coming into effect on Saturday. But Israel has repeatedly violated the agreement, killing Palestinians daily under the justification that they approached areas under the control of the Israeli military, which are not clearly marked.
Israeli has also threatened to once again restrict humanitarian aid to Gaza, accusing Hamas of failing to return all the bodies of the captives it held. And it has refused to open the Rafah crossing between the Palestinian enclave and Egypt, to facilitate movement in and out of the territory.
Trump has hailed the ceasefire as the dawn of “a new Middle East”, but his latest threat casts doubt on the sustainability of the truce, amid continuing Israeli occupation and a lack of clarity over the future governance of Gaza.
Later on Thursday, at an Oval Office news conference, Trump suggested that his warning to Hamas would not be carried out by US troops.
“I didn’t say who would go in, but somebody will go in,” the US president told reporters. “It’s not gonna be us. We won’t have to. There are people very close, very nearby that will go in. They’ll do the trick. Very easily. But under our auspices.”
