Since Donald Trump’s election, his default answer on the Gaza holocaust has been, “all hell will break loose” if the hostages aren’t released before his inauguration. He’s repeated this mantra in his victory speech, and every damn time since. During his last press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday, January 7, just a fortnight before he takes office, Trump hammered home his hell threat, warning what would happen if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages by January 20. “If they aren’t back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East, and it won’t be good for Hamas, and frankly, it won’t be good for anyone.”
Trump delivers these warnings in his signature Trumpian way, leaving so much room for interpretation that everyone hears what they want to. Here, we’ve got three angles to consider: the Israelis, the Palestinians, and Trump himself.
Israeli Perspective: The Hasbara crowd quickly spun Trump’s words into a positive, framing it as a threat to Hamas and potentially to Iran if they don’t release the hostages. Trump, they say, unlike “weak-kneed ‘woke’ Joe Biden,” speaks the language terrorists and antisemites understand: the sheer, uncompromising might of American power. But their arrogance might be putting the cart before the horse, as we’ll see.
Palestinian Perspective: To Palestinians, these threats are old news. All hell has been breaking loose on them since 1948, especially since 2023. Their interpretation is blunt: “You sound exactly like Netanyahu, we’ve seen what he’s capable of, but we’re not scared of you, so go f**k yourself.”
Trump’s Perspective: And here’s where it gets tricky for Israel. For over a year and a half, Israel’s been the sole roadblock to releasing hostages and getting a ceasefire. They keep changing the goalposts, introducing new demands every time negotiations seem to progress, while Hamas has been consistent since October 28, 2023. Yet, Biden’s administration never called Israel out on its bullshit. Instead, Blinken and Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, made sure Israel got everything it wanted—more money, diplomatic cover, legal protection, offensive and defensive weapons—even when Israel was letting Palestinian kids starve to death. This left Israel with no reason to seriously negotiate an end to the slaughter.
As a result, Netanyahu and his extremists concocted a new scheme to keep negotiations going without ever having to end them. They worked this out with Blinken and other Jewish Jihadists in the Biden administration. These radical Jewish Jihadists, steering U.S. foreign policy, then pressured Arab states hosting the talks to keep the sham dialogue going while Israel kept murdering Palestinians en masse.
However, the election of Trump changed everything. Initially, Israel hoped the mere specter of Trump’s incoming administration and his verbal threats would force Hamas to abandon its stance and accept Israel’s delicate condition: an open-ended Israeli occupation of Gaza alongside the release of all Israelis held there.
Netanyahu quickly dispatched his strategic affairs minister and point man, Ron Dermer, to Mar-a-Lago right after the election to enroll and indoctrinate Trump and his advisors into this plan. When Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff—a Jewish Zionist radical himself—first visited the region on December 2, 2024, he was operating under this same assumption. But after assessing the situation and studying both sides’ positions and what was causing the impasse, he returned to Mar-a-Lago. We don’t know exactly what he learned during his visit, but one thing was clear: Hamas had nothing left to lose. Its leadership was decimated, 95% of buildings in Gaza were vaporized or partially destroyed, and 10% of the Palestinian population in Gaza, including countless children, had been exterminated.
Witkoff was by Trump’s side when he issued his latest “all hell” threat, this time making it clear the warning wasn’t just directed at Hamas. Whatever Witkoff told him or what Trump learned from other sources, for the first time, Trump seemed to signal to Netanyahu that he knew he was the problem. And Trump did it in no uncertain terms. After leaving the press conference where he made his latest threat, Trump posted a video on his Truth App of Professor Sachs, who cast Netanyahu as the ultimate villain in the Middle East, “dragging the US into unnecessary wars,” as if to clarify to everyone exactly who his threats were aimed at.
Worried Netanyahu reacts.
What followed was mass panic, not just in Netanyahu’s cabinet but among Israel’s supporters and the Hasbara. The Hebrew media was alarmed and couldn’t hide their shock at Trump being so forthright in his intent to publicly humiliate Netanyahu into accepting a ceasefire, potentially on Hamas’ terms. However, the Zionist press in the US, as expected, gave this development the silent treatment, completely ignoring Trump’s post because acknowledging it would only worsen the situation. Their rationale was that the best propaganda is the one never spoken. As a result, Netanyahu immediately canceled his trip to the US for Trump’s inauguration—an event he wasn’t even invited to—while ordering his negotiation team to depart for Doha. For the first time, Netanyahu signaled readiness to meet Hamas’ demands by dispatching his Mossad, Shin Bet, and advisors to Doha.
Netanyahu also ran back to Biden—a weak, aging leader he had been humiliating and abusing since October 7, and whom he completely abandoned after Trump’s election—to essentially beg him not to give up on the negotiations and hand over the process to Trump just yet, as Biden’s team had indicated in recent days. Netanyahu made an unexpected call to Biden on Sunday, 1/12/2025, the first since October of the previous year, indicating his terror of Trump and his doubt that Trump would have his back, regardless of whether he was right or wrong, as Biden had been doing. Netanyahu’s frantic actions show that Israel has realized Trump’s verbal threats are largely aimed at them, and they are now scrambling to close the deal before the deadline.
This renewed urgency and seriousness from Israel, which was unthinkable just days ago, shows Trump’s threats are finally bearing fruit. Hamas now has more leverage over Israel than ever and needs to use it wisely to extract costly concessions from Netanyahu.
