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Rubio says Hamas has only days to accept ceasefire deal
The US secretary of state told reporters in Israel that Hamas has only a matter of days to accept a Gaza ceasefire deal, as Israel has begun its ground offensive in Gaza City.
Last month, Hamas informed mediators it had agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal and was ready to resume negotiations to discuss ending Israel’s war on Gaza.
As Hamas negotiators were meeting in Doha to discuss a new US-backed proposal, Israel bombed them, sabotaging the talks.
Trump keeps threatening Hamas, but what can he do?
For months, the US president has been issuing threats to Hamas, warning the group to free the Israeli captives or else.
In his latest warning today, Donald Trump said that the group would be in “big trouble” if it uses the captives as “human shields” in the way of Israel’s systematic annihilation of Gaza City, home to around one million Palestinians.
Yesterday, he made a similar threat, saying that if reports that Hamas is moving the captives above ground were true, “all bets are off”.
Earlier this month, Trump also issued what he called a “final warning” for Hamas. Even before coming into office in January, Trump threatened Hamas that “all hell will break out” if the captives were not released.
But it appears that there is little Washington can do to Hamas and Palestinians that Israel has not done already. Most of Hamas’s leadership, including its political and military chiefs, have been killed.
The White House may allow Israel to step up its military campaign in Gaza, which has been widely described by academics, United Nations officials and rights groups as a genocide. However, the US under both Trump and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, has done little to rein in its ally to begin with.
It is also difficult to apply Trump’s favoured methods of foreign policy coercion, tariffs and sanctions, to Hamas. The group has long been labelled as a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the US, so its assets and interests are under maximum sanctions.
Whenever asked about the situation in Gaza, Trump pivots to his efforts to free the Israeli captives, but Hamas has repeatedly agreed to proposals that would release them all as part of a lasting ceasefire.
