"Let all hell break out" is President Donald Trump's advice to Israel if "all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock," he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Hamas — whose leadership was recently in Tehran to celebrate their "great victory" over Israel — also accused the Jewish nation of breaking the ceasefire and threatened not to release more hostages by the Saturday deadline.
Because that's what terrorists do.
"I’d say they ought to be returned by 12 o’clock on Saturday, and if they’re not returned – all of them, not in drips and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two. Saturday at 12 o’clock, and after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out."
Asked what he meant by "hell," Trump answered, "You’ll find out, and they’ll find out — Hamas will find out what I mean."
Reporters also asked Trump if he might withhold aid from Egypt and Jordan if they refuse to take in Arabs from Gaza, now that the strip is mostly rubble after Hamas played FAFO with Israel on Oct. 7 of 2023. "Yeah, maybe, sure, why not? If they don’t, I would conceivably withhold aid, yes."
That question might seem like one of those endless attempts by the press to bait Trump into saying something outrageous that they can then use against him, but it's fair game after what Trump said during his Fox News Super Bowl Sunday interview. “No, they wouldn’t,” Trump said to Bret Baier when asked whether Gaza Arabs would have a right to return after being given new housing in Egypt or Jordan. “Because they will have much better housing. Much better – in other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them.”
That's radical — and I mean that in the best possible way.
Let's set the Wayback Machine to just six days ago when Trump first fronted the idea of resettling the 1.7 million or so Gaza Arabs with their brethren in Egypt and Jordan.
I wrote then that forced removal has always been "the one card Israel dare not play against the terror-minded Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank" because while "the rest of the Arab world has allowed Israel (mostly) a free hand to deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, and the worst elements of the P.A.," mass resettling "is something only Israel's radical hardliners even whisper."
But by putting an American imprimatur on the idea, "What Trump did was force a hard reset on the Gaza problem, with the dual sticks of an American military presence/forced removals and the carrot of international development. Either way, the other Arab nations can get serious about divorcing Gazans from their terrorist ambitions… or maybe they get the stick."
Either way, Trump means that the days of Gaza as a militarized base of terrorist operations masquerading as a multibillion-dollar "refugee camp" are over.
When Trump floated the idea last week, even some reasonably pro-Trump conservatives were aghast, mistaking the suggestion for an American invasion of Gaza — or worse. By the time Trump repeated it to Baier on Sunday, there were barely any gasps to be heard at all. When he repeated it again yesterday, it was virtually an established fact that the Arab countries, particularly Egypt and Jordan, were going to have to step up and, after almost 60 years, do their bit to settle the ridiculous "forever refugee" status of the Gaza Arabs.
The Overton Window shifted radically in the direction of establishing a new and permanent status for the Gazans — and maybe even a new home.
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