US President Donald Trump says he told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “You do whatever you want,” with regard to the hostage release-ceasefire deal.
Trump does not specify when he conveyed this message to Netanyahu.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Trump is asked about the Saturday deadline he imposed for Hamas to release all of the hostages, which passed without incident.
Trump, for the first time, explicitly says that he made the threat because Hamas had said it would not be releasing the three hostages that it was slated to release on Saturday, under the terms of the deal.
Over the past several days, US officials have argued that it was Trump’s threat that led Hamas to back down from its own threat not to release any hostages.
But the Trump threat would have contradicted the terms of the deal, which only stipulated Hamas release three hostages on Saturday, not all of them.
Trump, when he first made the threat of “hell raining down” on Hamas, clarifies that he is leaving it up to Israel to decide what to do.
Trump tells reporters that Hamas agreed to deliver the three hostages, including an American citizen — Sagui Dekel-Chen — because of this threat.
He also notes that the hostages released this weekend “were in pretty good shape,” unlike the ones released a week ago, whom Trump says looked like “Holocaust survivors.”
As for the next steps in the hostage deal, Trump says, “That’ll be up to Israel… in consultation with me.”
