US President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t like being asked what he meant when he threatened “all hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released by his January 20 inauguration.
Twice this past week he was pressed to elaborate, sparking angry reactions of “I don’t think I have to go into it anymore” and “Do I have to define it for you?”
When The Times of Israel subsequently asked two of Trump’s aides to explain what he meant by the threat, they also declined to do so.
This is the same Trump who during his first term promised “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continued threatening the US, only to later build a warm relationship with Kim Jong Un, even as the latter continued to threaten Washington.
But Trump also ordered the strike that took out the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, demonstrating that he wasn’t afraid to take unprecedented military action against the Tehran-led Axis of Resistance against Israel.
The lack of clarity regarding Trump’s threat may be meant to preserve maximum maneuverability and an element of surprise, but it has also somewhat blunted the effectiveness of his message.
“Trump tries to use his unpredictability as an asset,” said a senior Arab diplomat for one of the countries mediating the hostage talks between Israel and Hamas. “Sometimes there’s something behind his threats, and sometimes there isn’t. The problem is, we don’t know which is the case this time.”
The vagueness of Trump’s comments also leaves open the possibility that he does not intend the US to be the one making good on the “all hell to pay” threat. Enter Israel.
Once January 20 rolls around, Israel is planning to ramp up various forms of pressure on Hamas in Gaza to get a deal over the finish line, unencumbered by the demands of outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration or his threat of cuts to security assistance over the humanitarian crisis in the Strip, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
The official said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has weighed significantly restricting the amount of humanitarian aid entering Gaza if there is no hostage deal by the inauguration.
Israel is also planning to ramp up the IDF’s ongoing ground offensive in Gaza, expanding the operation that has largely targeted the........