"Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East," Trump said in a Truth Social post, "have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and 'straighten ou[t] Hamas' if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us."
"The love and spirit for the Middle East has not been seen like this in a thousand years!" Trump continued "It is a beautiful thing to behold! I told these countries, and Israel, 'NOT YET!' There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL! I would like to thank all of those countries that called to help. Also, I would like to thank the great and powerful country of Indonesia, and its wonderful leader, for all of the help they have shown and given to the Middle East, and to the U.S.A. TO EVERYONE, thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”
On Monday, while meeting with Australia's prime minister, Trump was asked about the renewed tensions in the region. "What steps is the administration taking to maintain a ceasefire?" he was asked.
"Well, a lot of steps. And right now it's in the hands of others. You know, we have 59 countries that agreed to the deal. We have peace in the Middle East for the first time ever, we made a deal with Hamas that they're going to be very good, they're going to behave, they're going to be nice, and if they're not, we're going in, we're going to eradicate them," Trump said.
"If we have to, they'll be eradicated," Trump continued. "And they know that. So they went in, they went in. And I don't believe it was a leadership, but they had some rebellion in there among themselves, and they killed some people, pretty a lot of people. But this is a violent group you probably noticed over the last 100 years. This is a very violent group of people, and they got very rambunctious, and they did things that they shouldn't be doing. And if they keep doing it, then we're going to go in and straighten it out, and it'll happen very quickly and pretty violently, unfortunately."
A follow up question came asking if that eradication would "include American boots on the ground."
"No, it won't be on the ground at all," Trump said. "We don't need to, because we have many countries, as you know, signed on to this deal..."
"I mean," he went on to say, "we've had countries calling me when they saw some of the killing with Hamas saying, 'we'd love to go in and take care of the situation ourselves.' In addition, you have Israel would go in in two minutes. If I asked him to go in, I could tell him, go in and take care of it."
"But right now, we haven't said that. We're going to give it a little chance, and hopefully there will be a little less violence. But right now, you know, they're violent people. Hamas has been very violent, but they don't have the backing of Iran anymore. They don't have the backing of really anybody anymore. They have to be good, and if they're not good, they'll be eradicated."
