President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that the U.S. and Israel had ended talks with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, due to the organization’s intransigence.
Speaking with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before departing for Scotland, Trump said: “Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die.”
As Breitbart News reported, the U.S. and Israel left Doha, Qatar, on Thursday, after Hamas refused to compromise. Some of the group’s proposals had been so extreme that even Arab mediators had rejected them.
There are still 50 Israeli hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.
Trump told reporters that he had anticipated that the last hostages would be the most difficult to convince Hamas to release, because “Hamas understands what happens when you don’t have any bargaining chips.”
He would not say precisely how the U.S. and Israel planned to proceed, but said: “I think what’s going to happen is they’re going to be hunted down,” referring to Hamas.
Israel has said that it remains open to negotiations but will continue using its military to close in on the remaining Hamas positions in Gaza, which it has not attacked out of fear of harming the hostages.
Trump also dismissed a pledge by French president Emmanuel Macron this week to recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. “Here’s the good news: what he says doesn’t matter,” Trump said.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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