The White House is actively striving to uphold the Gaza peace agreement, with U.S. officials increasingly worried that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could undermine the delicate, American-brokered deal.
Vice President JD Vance is currently en route to Israel. He will join Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, both of whom were instrumental in forging the initial agreement.
Concurrently, President Trump issued a strong warning, stating that he would permit Israeli forces to “eradicate” Hamas if violence in the region persisted.
“We struck a deal with Hamas, and, you know, they’re going to be very good. They’re going to behave. They’re going to be nice,” Trump informed reporters at the White House. “And if they’re not, we’re going to go and we’re going to eradicate them if we have to. They’ll be eradicated. And they know that.”
Vance’s visit is intended to powerfully signal the administration’s unwavering commitment to preserving the peace deal. Although the administration brokered a cease-fire this month in the two-year conflict between Israel and Hamas, a recent surge of violence on Sunday has underscored the truce’s extreme fragility. The Israeli military reported that two Israeli soldiers were killed and another wounded when Palestinian militants launched an anti-tank missile at an army vehicle.
Image: President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel meet in Jerusalem last week. Several Trump officials, speaking anonymously due to the private nature of the discussions, expressed administration fears that Mr. Netanyahu might abandon the peace agreement.
Speaking anonymously to discuss private conversations, several Trump officials revealed internal administration worries that Prime Minister Netanyahu might withdraw from the agreement. The current strategy, these officials indicated, centers on Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner working to prevent Netanyahu from initiating a full-scale offensive against Hamas.
Both Israel and Hamas have traded accusations of violating the truce following multiple violent incidents in recent days. However, both parties maintain their commitment to upholding the cease-fire.
For now, a White House official, speaking privately about the president’s perspective, stated that Mr. Trump believes Hamas leaders are prepared to continue sincere negotiations, viewing the attack on Israeli soldiers as the act of a fringe faction within the group.
Indeed, Mr. Trump has publicly contradicted Israeli claims that Hamas violated the agreement. On Monday, he framed the ongoing skirmishes in Gaza as a “rebellion” within Hamas, suggesting it did not reflect the organization’s leadership. He warned that if the “rambunctious” violence continued, the United States would fully support Israel in eliminating the organization.
“This is the moment that matters,” commented Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. “This is what is going to set the tone for if and how this cease-fire holds, or what it even means. That’s all being established now.”
When questioned about the Gaza situation on Monday, Mr. Trump asserted that enforcing the agreement was the responsibility of other nations. A White House official involved in the planning confirmed that negotiators from several Arab governments instrumental in brokering the deal are currently meeting in Cairo.
Image: A scene from Khan Younis, Gaza, on Sunday, showing teams searching for the remains of Israeli hostages amidst the rubble.
“Right now, it’s in the hands of others,” Mr. Trump stated earlier on Monday. “You know, we have 59 countries that agreed to the deal.”
Senior administration officials have indicated that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner recognize the “very delicate” nature of the situation and the risk of the peace deal collapsing. Their primary objectives include stabilizing the region, ensuring humanitarian aid reaches Gaza, and facilitating the return of the remains of deceased Israeli hostages to their families.
To assist in locating the bodies, the United States is collaborating with Turkey, leveraging its expertise in body retrieval, honed through frequent earthquake recovery efforts.
Witkoff and Kushner are also tackling unresolved issues from their initial deal, which successfully secured the release of all living Israeli hostages. These include establishing an Egyptian-led stabilization force and initiating Hamas’s demilitarization, for which no concrete timeline exists.
A complicating factor has been Hamas’s aggressive suppression of rivals in Gaza since the deal was struck. While Mr. Trump initially praised this as an effort to dismantle “gangs,” he has since expressed reservations.
The agreement stipulates Hamas’s demilitarization, a challenging objective. Mr. Trump has affirmed that if Hamas fails to uphold its demilitarization pledges, Israel would receive full U.S. support to violently eliminate the organization. The U.S. team is also working to bring developers into areas no longer controlled by Hamas, establishing tariff-free zones to rebuild those parts of Gaza.
On Sunday, Mr. Vance described the “best-case scenario” as a series of “fits and starts” between Israeli forces and Hamas.
“Hamas is going to fire on Israel,” he explained. “Israel is going to have to respond.”
Vance noted the difficulty in fully understanding the “reality on the ground” when dealing with Hamas, citing the organization’s “about 40 different cells.”
“Some of those cells will probably honor the cease-fire,” he predicted. “Many of those cells, as we saw some evidence of today, will not. Before we actually can ensure that Hamas is properly disarmed, that’s going to require, as we know, some of these Gulf Arab states, to get forces in there to actually apply some law and order and some security keeping on the ground.”