US President Donald Trump has ruled out sending US troops to Gaza after issuing a stark warning to “kill” members of Hamas.
Donald Trump clarified that US troops will not enter Gaza after posting on Truth Social on Thursday that if Hamas continues to kill people, “we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.”
Speaking to reporters later that day, Trump said, “I didn’t say who’s going to go in, but somebody’s going to go in. It won’t be us. We won’t have to. There are people very close, very close who will go in. They’ll do the trick very easily. But under our auspices,” ABC reported.
In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “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. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
According to ABC, Trump said that US troops will not go to Gaza. He informed reporters on Thursday (local time): “I haven’t said who will go in, but somebody will go in. It won’t be us. We won’t have to. There are people very close, very close who will go in. They will do the trick very easily. But under our auspices.”
Israel threatens to resume war if Hamas fails to abide by Trump’s Gaza deal
Meanwhile, according to Bloomberg, Israel has warned that it will resume military operations in Gaza if Hamas does not comply with all the steps outlined in Trump’s peace plan.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the military to prepare for the “total defeat of Hamas in Gaza” if the group, which is classified as a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU, does not disarm and return the bodies of the deceased hostages it is holding.
Katz stated: “If Hamas refuses to abide by the agreement, Israel, in coordination with the US, will return to the fight and act to achieve the complete defeat of Hamas.
“We want them to give up their weapons, to sacrifice them. And they agreed to do it. Now they have to do it. And if they don’t do it, we will,” Trump repeated those statements, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Hamas returned all 20 living hostages to Israel on Monday and has so far sent the remains of seven deceased hostages, with 21 still missing.
According to the Israeli military, it was later determined that one of the bodies brought back to Israel did not belong to the hostages. Hamas said it would send two more bodies on Wednesday evening, but its military wing said it had released all the remains of the Israeli hostages currently within its reach and that “extensive efforts and special equipment” were needed to retrieve the rest.
Israel has already reduced the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza, attributing the disruption to Trump’s peace plan to Hamas’ slow pace in returning Israeli remains. The Palestinian humanitarian organization warned that the volume and distribution of aid is still insufficient for the population in need.
About 800 aid trucks passed through the Kerem Shalom and Kissufim border crossings between Israel and Gaza on Sunday, up from the usual 300 a day but still below the necessary amount, said Amjad Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network.
He declared: “Gaza needs 1,000 trucks a day and all six border crossings must be opened to meet the escalating humanitarian needs.”
Shawa noted that no aid arrived on Monday, the day Hamas released the last living hostages captured during the October 7, 2023, attacks that started the war.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)
