Netanyahu and Abdullah are living in Trump’s world now. Is Hamas?
As Jordan’s king was praying for the Oval Office floor to swallow him up, Israel’s PM was trying to work out how high the president wanted him to jump. What about the bullies of Hamas?
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).
This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.
At last Tuesday’s Oval Office briefing for the media, anticipating a fairly short session given that a full press conference was scheduled for later in the day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially appeared irritated that reporters were being given time to shout barrages of questions at him and his host, US President Donald Trump.
“I would think that’s about enough,” he said, early in what turned into a 14-minute Q and A. He next accused the Israeli reporters in the room of taking over the event, and then snapped, “I think that I should talk to President Trump, okay?”
Gradually, however, he realized that Trump was relishing the moment and, moreover, was talking about “permanently” removing the entire population of Gaza. If you look at the transcript, you’ll see that Trump dominated the rest of the proceedings, with Netanyahu contentedly taking a back seat.
Flash forward a week, and the foreign leader getting the Oval Office treatment this Tuesday was Jordan’s Abdullah II. Unlike for Netanyahu, for the king the encounter was nightmarish from start to finish.
The lowest low point was probably when Trump insisted that “we’ll have a parcel of land in Jordan… a parcel of land in Egypt,” where the president’s exiled Gazans “are going to live very happily and very safely.”
“And is there a parcel of land in Jordan that you’re willing to have Palestinians…?” Abdullah was naturally asked.
“Well, I think what we said, er, I have to look at the best interests of my country,” managed the monarch, mustering language that was about as defiant as he could dare when seated knee-to-knee with the unpredictable leader of the free world, on whose support his monarchy depends, and who is insisting he import large numbers of a potentially destabilizing populace into his perpetually wobbling kingdom.
Throughout the ordeal, Abdullah looked like a particularly elegant fish flailing hopelessly on the hook, features locked in a rictus grin, a nervous tic highlighting his discomfort — his every sinew screaming, “Get me out of here.”
But Netanyahu is on Trump’s hook, too — as evidenced by the drama that was playing out almost simultaneously in Jerusalem. As Abdullah was heading to the White House, Israel’s security cabinet was meeting, ostensibly in the wake of Hamas’s declaration on Monday that it was halting until further notice the hostage releases to which it is committed under the Gaza ceasefire. In fact, however, Netanyahu and his senior ministers were trying to work out exactly what Trump meant by his ultimatum to Hamas, issued Monday and repeated on Tuesday, to free “all of the hostages” by noon Saturday or risk “hell” breaking out.
It is, as so often, somewhat unclear what Trump has in mind when it comes to the unleashing of hell. It is hard to imagine what further hellishness could be directed at Hamas in Gaza that would not also deeply harm those who Trump has called the “wonderful” non-Hamas populace there and the very hostages — 33 of whom are believed to be alive — for whose well-being the president is profoundly concerned.
But it is clear that Trump’s admirable frustration with a deal under which hostages are “dribbling in” from Gaza three at a time, looking like “Holocaust survivors,” is a public rejection of the protracted phased framework that Netanyahu approved and conveyed to the Biden administration in May, and that Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff finally got rolling last month.
Netanyahu and his coalition have refused since October 7 to seriously contemplate a one-time deal involving the release of all hostages in exchange for vast numbers of Palestinian security prisoners and an end to the war. And the prime minister spent months — from May 2024 to January 2025 — condemning Hamas for rejecting his favored phased framework, while furiously denying that he was preventing its implementation. On Tuesday, however, Netanyahu and his ministers sprinted to dissociate themselves from their own deal, in favor of Trump’s “all of them, now” approach.
As a succession of short, carefully composed and ultimately contradictory statements were issued to the media by one or more official sources who must not be named, and Netanyahu issued a video statement of his own, all in the space of about two hours, I wondered whether someone at the White House was calling the Prime Minister’s Office after each utterance and saying, increasingly testily, “Wrong, do it again.”
We went from an anodyne statement by the anonymous official source that ministers had unanimously backed Trump’s hostage-release call and deadline; to a specific demand, again conveyed by Mr. No Name, for the release of the nine living hostages yet to be freed in phase one; to Netanyahu in person warning that the ceasefire will end and intensive fighting resume if “our hostages” are not freed by noon on Saturday; and then back to Official X, finally uttering the “all” word: “Prime Minister Netanyahu and the cabinet are sticking to US President Trump’s message about the release of hostages: That is, that all of them will go out on Shabbat.”
Jump, Mr. President? Well, of course. But how high?
More than one security cabinet member is apparently of the opinion that the Trump ultimatum, eventually endorsed on the fourth attempt, will work — at least to some extent. According to an Army Radio report on Wednesday morning, the expectation in the security cabinet is that Hamas will on Saturday release more than the three hostages it is required to free under the deal and whose release it had said it was freezing.
It is worth remembering that Trump’s similarly ominous and nonspecific threat of hell breaking loose if the current deal was not signed and sealed by his inauguration indeed produced the desired effect — albeit for a deal he now denounces.
A key question this time is what kind of leverage Trump can exercise — or Hamas fears he could exercise — in support of his commendable demand that all the hostages go free now.
Plainly, he has leverage over Qatar — which holds vulnerable assets in the US, is a designated major non-NATO ally of the US, and hosts the largest US military installation in the Middle East. It has for years enabled Hamas to thrive financially. And it funds the Al Jazeera network that has been intermittently outlawed by numerous US allies in the region and beyond, and is currently banned by the Palestinian Authority (for incitement) and Israel (as a threat to national security).
But is he prepared to use that leverage? He said at his Oval Office session with Netanyahu that “Qatar is absolutely trying to help” on Gaza. And would Hamas care if, in turn, Qatar tried to squeeze it?
As is his way, Trump was airily confident on Tuesday as regards Gaza’s terrorist monsters and his ultimatum. “They want to play tough guy, but we’ll see how tough they are,” he declared. “They’re bullies. Hamas is bullies. The weakest people are bullies.”
Just like King Abdullah, praying for the Oval Office floor to open up and swallow him whole, so too Netanyahu, his government and by extension the rest of us here are all living in Trump’s world now. We’re about to find out whether Hamas is too.
