As president, Donald Trump plans to be a ferocious and unqualified supporter of Israel in the war-torn Middle East, including by joining forces with the Jewish state to maximise military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas to release its hostages in Gaza.
Total support for Israel was the clear message the president-elect was trying to send with his incendiary threat to the terror group to release all Israeli hostages by the time he takes office or be hit “harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America”.
Trump’s statement was a startling change of tone compared to the qualified and safe diplomatic language from the Biden administration on the Gaza conflict. It is the strongest signal yet that Trump plans to be a more activist president in the Middle East than many expected.
Of course, there is often a substantial gap between Trump’s rhetoric and the reality of what he does, and that is certainly the case here. What makes his comments significant is that they offer the clearest signal yet that his administration will be even more pro-Israel than was Biden’s.
His pledge to hit “those responsible” for taking the hostages is a threat rather than a plan that would or could be realised in practice.
Trump is an isolationist by nature whose instinct is to avoid US military involvement in war wherever possible. That’s why he has pledged – in similarly hyperbolic language – to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours of becoming president.
No country could do more than Israel is in rooting out and destroying Hamas. It has been fighting its war against the terror group in Gaza from the ground and the air for more than a year, and has effectively dismantled Hamas as a coherent fighting force.
The notion that Trump as president would now risk sending in US forces on the ground in Gaza to fight alongside Israeli troops – or allow US war planes to bombard Gaza, with the resulting civilian casualties – is highly unlikely.
More likely is that Trump’s comments are a prelude to even closer US co-operation with Israeli forces in the intelligence-gathering, targeting and execution of missions in Gaza, rather than any actions that would see US military personnel placed in harm’s way.
Trump hopes his comments will add further pressure on Hamas to agree to a ceasefire deal that would see the release of the roughly 60 remaining hostages still thought to be alive.
From Hamas’s perspective, Trump’s comments are a further example of the longer-term futility of continuing to fight a war the terror group has so clearly lost.
This week, Hamas’s partners in terror to the north in Lebanon, Hezbollah, agreed to a ceasefire after being hammered by Israeli forces in recent months, while Hezbollah’s puppet master, Iran, is wary of military confrontation with Israel after Israel launched two military strikes against it earlier this year.
Hamas now knows that come Inauguration Day, January 20, the new US president will be hatching fresh plans with Israel to try to force it to end the war and surrender the hostages.
Trump has previously been deliberately vague in his plans for the Middle East, saying only that Israel should “finish it off” and destroy Hamas. “Get it over with and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people,” he has said. But he has not explained how this should be achieved.
Trump was a firm supporter of Israel during his first term, recognising Jerusalem as its capital, thereby bolstering its claim over the disputed city, and helping forge the Abraham Accords normalising relations between Israel and the UAE, and Israel and Bahrain. Trump also pulled out of the so-called nuclear deal with Israel’s sworn enemy, Iran, and pursued a much more aggressive policy towards Iran than did the Biden administration.
Trump’s promise to hit Hamas unless it releases its hostages is his way of sending a broader message that the US will have Israel’s back while he is president.
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