Donald Trump launched a “last warning” in Hamas on Wednesday, March 5, enjoining him to release the hostages, otherwise the “people of Gaza” risks “death”, the same day Washington confirmed to having had direct contact with the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“To the people of Gaza: a bright future awaits you, but not if you keep hostages. If you do, you are dead! Make a good decision,” threatened the American president in a message on his Truth Social network.
He still said he sent “to Israel everything he needs to finish the work” in Gaza, adding, at the time when the truce in the Gaza Strip seems threatened: “No member of Hamas will be safe if you do not do what I say”. “It is now that you have to leave Gaza, as long as you can still do it,” he said to the leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
The head of American diplomacy, Marco Rubio, assured that Donald Trump was not joking. “He doesn’t say this kind of thing if he doesn’t think them, as people can see it around the world. If he says he’s going to do something, he’s going to do it,” he said on Fox News. “So they would do it to take it seriously,” he added for Hamas.
Direct consultations
The threats of the American president, who met eight hostages released from Gaza on Wednesday, occurred the day when the United States, as well as Hamas, confirmed to having had direct contacts. These unprecedented consultations break with a long-standing policy that the United States does not have direct talks with groups which they consider terrorists, which has been the case for Hamas since 1997.
The White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the American special envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, was “engaged in these negotiations, (and) the authority to speak to anyone”. She refused to deliver details, arguing that “American lives were at stake”, but said that Israel had been “consulted”, which the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu then confirmed.
For his part, an official of Hamas spoke of AFP, under the seal of anonymity, “two direct meetings between Hamas and American officials in recent days in Doha”.
There are five American hostages held in Gaza, four of whom are confirmed dead and one would be alive, according to an AFP count.