Donald Trump’s warning for Hamas as ceasefire talks stall
Donald Trump gave Hamas an ominous warning as ceasefire talks fell apart but it was perhaps his honey-coated sledge at Emmanuel Macron for France’s Palestine pledge which hurt the most.
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US President Donald Trump said that Hamas did not want a ceasefire deal in Gaza, after Israel and the United States quit indirect negotiations with the Palestinian militant group.
“It was too bad. Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die,” Mr Trump said.
“Now we’re down to the final hostages, and they know what happens after you get the final hostages. And basically because of that, they really didn’t want to make a deal.”
Mr Trump later gave a brutal backhanded compliment regarding the announcement France would begin recognising Palestine.
“Look, he’s a different kind of a guy,” Mr Trump told CNN referring to French President Emmanuel Macron.
“He’s OK. He’s a team player, pretty much. Here’s the good news: What he says doesn’t matter.
“It’s not going to change anything.
“He’s a very good guy. I like him. But that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
The President was at pains amid reports of the mass starvation of Gazans to highlight the funds contributed by Washington.
“People don’t know this, and we didn’t certainly get any acknowledgment or thank you. But we contributed $60 million (A$90 million) to food and supplies and everything else,” Mr Trump said.
“We hope the money gets there because, you know, that money gets taken. The food gets taken. We’re going to do more. But we gave a lot of money.”
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ISRAEL FIRES ‘PROJECTILE’
The Israeli military said a “projectile” was fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel on Saturday.“A projectile was identified crossing the Gaza Strip from the south and most likely falling in an open area,” the military said in a statement, adding that there were no injuries reported.
ALBANESE: GAZA GONE BEYOND WORST FEARS
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made his strongest comments yet regarding the conflict.
“The situation in Gaza has gone beyond the world’s worst fears,” Mr Albanese said in a statement.
“Tens of thousands of civilians are dead, children are starving. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe.
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) July 25, 2025
“Israel’s denial of aid and the killing of civilians, including children, seeking access to water and food cannot be defended or ignored.”
“We call on Israel to comply immediately with its obligations under international law. This includes allowing the United Nations and NGOs to carry out their lifesaving work safely and without hindrance.”
FRANCE TO RECOGNISE PALESTINE
France will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly in September, President Emmanuel Macron announced.
“True to its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognise the State of Palestine. I will make a formal announcement at the United Nations General Assembly in September,” the French head of state wrote on X and Instagram.
Upon his arrival in Scotland, US President Donald Trump said Mr Macron’s view of Palestinian sovereignty “doesn’t matter.”
The action breaks with the long-held view of Western powers that Palestinians can only gain statehood as part of a negotiated peace with Israel.
Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin slammed the move calling it “a black mark on French history and a direct aid to terrorism”.
Levin, who is also justice minister, said France’s “shameful decision” meant it was now “time to apply Israeli sovereignty” to the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
They include most Middle Eastern, African, Latin American and Asian countries, but not the United States, Canada, most of western Europe, Australia, Japan or South Korea.
Including France, Palestinian statehood is now recognised by 142 countries, according to an AFP tally, though Israel and the United States strongly oppose recognition.
France would be the most significant European power to recognise a Palestinian state.
“The urgent priority today is to end the war in Gaza and rescue the civilian population,” Macron wrote.
“We must finally build the State of Palestine, ensure its viability and enable it, by accepting its demilitarisation and fully recognising Israel, to contribute to the security of all in the Middle East.”
Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas’s deputy Hussein al-Sheikh welcomed France’s intent to recognise a State of Palestine, thanking President Macron.
“This position reflects France’s commitment to international law and its support for the Palestinian people’s rights to self-determination and the establishment of our independent state,” Sheikh said.
ISRAEL RECALLS NEGOTIATORS FROM PEACE TALKS
Israel said it had recalled its negotiators from Gaza ceasefire talks with Hamas, as international pressure mounted for a breakthrough to end nearly two years of devastating war.
Mediators have been shuttling between Israeli and Hamas delegations in Qatar for more than two weeks, but the indirect talks have so far failed to yield an elusive truce.
International concern is growing over the plight of the more than two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where the fighting has triggered a dire humanitarian crisis and warnings that “mass starvation” was spreading.
The office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that after Hamas had submitted its response to mediators on the latest ceasefire proposal, the Israeli negotiators were being brought back for consultations.
“We appreciate the efforts of mediators Qatar and Egypt and the efforts of (US special) envoy (Steve) Witkoff to bring about a breakthrough,” said a statement from Mr Netanyahu’s office.
A Palestinian source familiar with the talks told AFP earlier that Hamas’s response included proposed amendments to clauses on the entry of aid, maps of areas from which the Israeli army should withdraw, and guarantees on securing a permanent end to the war.
The White House said that US envoy Witkoff was meeting “key leaders” from the region to discuss the ceasefire proposal.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces had killed at least 40 people since dawn on Thursday, including six waiting for aid.
‘MAN-MADE MASS STARVATION’: ISRAEL HITS BACK
Israel has hit back at growing international criticism that it was behind chronic food shortages in Gaza, instead accusing Hamas of deliberately creating a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territory.
More than 100 aid and human rights groups said earlier Wednesday that “mass starvation” was spreading in the Gaza Strip, while France warned of a growing “risk of famine” caused by “the blockade imposed by Israel”.
The head of the World Health Organisation also weighed in, saying that a “large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving”.
“I don’t know what you would call it other than mass starvation — and it’s man-made,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.
But an Israeli government spokesman, David Mencer, said there was “no famine caused by Israel. There is a man-made shortage engineered by Hamas.” President Isaac Herzog, visiting troops in Gaza, maintained that Israel was acting “according to international law”, while Hamas was “trying to sabotage” aid distribution in a bid to obstruct the Israeli military campaign that began more than 21 months ago.
It comes as Tunisian President Kais Saied presented his US counterpart Donald Trump’s senior Africa adviser with photographs of starving children in Gaza, official video of their meeting showed.
Saied told US envoy Massad Boulos, who is also the father-in-law of Mr Trump’s daughter Tiffany, that “it is time for all of humanity to wake up and put an end to these crimes against the Palestinian people”.
“I believe you know these images well,” Saied was seen telling the envoy as he showed a photograph of what he described as “a child crying, eating sand in occupied Palestine”.
Saied showed Boulos several more images, saying that Palestinians in Gaza were subjected to crimes against humanity.
ISRAELI LEADERS DISCUSS TRUMP’S GAZA ‘RIVIERA’ PLAN
Some Israeli far-right leaders have discussed the possibility of redeveloping the Gaza Strip into a tourist-friendly “riviera” during a public meeting held on Tuesday.
The meeting, titled “The Riviera in Gaza: From Vision to Reality”, was held in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, under the auspices of some of its most hard line members.
It comes US President Donald Trump floated a proposal in February to turn the war-ravaged territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East” after moving out its Palestinian residents and putting it under American control.
The idea drew swift condemnation from across the Arab world, and from Palestinians themselves, for whom any effort to force them off their land would recall the “Nakba”, or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.
Participants in Tuesday’s meeting such as finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and activist Daniella Weiss discussed a “master plan” drafted by Weiss’s organisation to re-establish a permanent Jewish presence in Gaza.
The detailed plan foresees the construction of housing for 1.2 million new Jewish residents, and the development of industrial and agricultural zones, as well as tourism complexes on the coast.
Eight Israeli settlements located in various parts of the Gaza Strip were dismantled in 2005 as part of Israel’s unilateral decision to “disengage” from Gaza following years of violence between settlers, Palestinian armed groups and the army.
For the past two decades, a small but vocal section of Israeli society has urged the resettlement of the Strip.
‘HELL ON EARTH’: GAZA HORROR ESCALATES
The UN has described the “horror” facing Palestinians in Gaza as unprecedented in recent years, with doctors fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion, adding that the region is “hell on earth”.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that the Israel-Gaza war was “with a level of death and destruction without parallel in recent times”.
“Devastation is being layered upon devastation,” he said in a speech in Geneva.
The UN warned 1000 people are estimated to have been killed seeking food.
Meanwhile the head of Gaza’s largest hospital on Tuesday said 21 children had died due to malnutrition and starvation in the Palestinian territory in the past three days, while Israel pressed a devastating assault.
Head of the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that its staff members as well as doctors and humanitarian workers were fainting on duty due to hunger and exhaustion, Reuters reported.
“Over 1,000 Palestinians have now been killed by the Israeli military while trying to get food in Gaza since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation started operating,” UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told AFP.
“As of July 21, we have recorded 1,054 people killed in Gaza while trying to get food; 766 of them were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near UN and other humanitarian organisations’ aid convoys.”
AUSTRALIA AMONG 25 COUNTRIES CALLING FOR END TO GAZA WAR
It comes amid calls from Australia and more than two dozen Western countries for an immediate end to the war in Gaza, saying the suffering in the region had “reached new depths”.
After more than 21 months of fighting which have triggered catastrophic humanitarian conditions for Gaza’s more than two million people and following Israel’s military expanding its operations into the central city of Deir el-Balah, Israeli allies Britain, France, Australia, Canada and 21 other countries, plus the EU, said in a joint statement that the war “must end now”.
“The suffering of civilians in Gaza has reached new depths,” the signatories added, urging a negotiated ceasefire, the release of hostages held by Palestinian militants and the free flow of much-needed aid.
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Originally published as Donald Trump’s warning for Hamas as ceasefire talks stall
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