With his right hand not knowing what his left hand does, Trump plays with fire

US President Donald J. Trump may be a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.

Mr. Trump’s dealings this week with the Palestinians tell the story.

No stranger to breaking taboos, Mr. Trump instructed his White House spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, to confirm that the administration was talking to Hamas directly about the release of hostages and a potential end to the Gaza war.

Mr. Trump accompanied the disclosure with a seemingly genocidal threat to Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants if Hamas refused to let the hostages go.

Mr. Trump’s authorization of the direct talks in Qatar breaks with the US policy not to talk to entities it has designated terrorists. It also legitimizes Qatar’s long-standing role as a backchannel at the request of the United States and with Israeli acquiescence.

All previous US Gaza war-related exchanges with Hamas were indirect through Qatar and Egypt.

On one level, direct talks with Hamas make perfect sense. They can help ensure that nothing is lost in translation and enable parties to read each other better.

Of the five Israeli Americans among the 59 hostages still held by Hamas after multiple prisoner exchanges, only one, 21-year-old Edan Alexander, is believed to be still alive.

The timing of the talks enhances their significance.

Hamas will likely see the talks as de facto US recognition that it remains a force on the ground in Gaza that Israel has failed to destroy in 15 months of relentless pounding of the Strip, even if that was not Mr. Trump’s intention.

That could complicate efforts by the president’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to salvage the Gaza ceasefire when he travels to the region in the coming days.

The ceasefire is teetering on the brink of collapse because of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to negotiate a second phase as mandated by the ceasefire agreement.

Mr. Netanyahu refuses a second phase because it would involve ending the war, withdrawing all Israeli forces from Gaza, and installing a Palestinian administration of the Strip without having destroyed Hamas or removing the group from the territory.

Mr Netanyahu fears that those terms would reinforce Palestinian claims to the territory as part of a future Palestinian state.

Yet, counterintuitively, that may be what Mr. Trump has done by engaging with Hamas after 17 months of largely failed on-and-off ceasefire negotiations following the brief halt of hostilities in November 2023 in which Qatar and Egypt served as go-betweens.

Mr. Netanyahu fears that the administration’s engagement legitimizes Hamas and will strengthen its insistence on sticking to the ceasefire agreement’s provision for second-phase negotiations that should have started in February rather than an extension of the first phase as demanded by Israel.

Mr. Trump may hope that his threat, issued hours after meeting hostages released by Hamas in earlier prisoner exchanges, would calm Israeli fears and deprive Hamas of any illusion that direct talks constitute a softening of his attitude toward the group.

The threat reiterated the president’s longstanding insistence that Hamas leave or be forcibly removed from Gaza.

“For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza while you still have a chance,” Mr. Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social, echoing Mr. Netanyahu’s demand.

Rather than cow Hamas into submission, Mr. Trump’s threat, coupled with the unprecedented direct talks, is likely to reinforce Hamas’ resolve, anchored in its survival of Israel’s brutal attempt to destroy it.

Responding to Mr. Trump’s threat, Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif Al-Qanoua insisted, “The best track to release the remaining Israeli prisoners is by the occupation going into the second phase and compelling it to adhere to the agreement signed under the sponsorship of mediators.”

The administration’s engagement will also reinforce Hamas’ rejection of demands by Israel and some Arab states that it disarms as part of an end to the war rather than once the Palestinians and Israel have agreed on a resolution of their conflict.

Hamas believes that its armed struggle, including the hostages kidnapped during the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the Gaza war, is what brought the Trump administration to the negotiating table.

In that sense, Hamas will likely prove to be a different kettle of fish compared to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has gone out of his way to repair relations after last week’s bruising Oval Office encounter with Mr. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

Unlike Mr. Zelensky, who enjoyed massive US support in the first three years of the Ukraine war, Hamas is used to bombastic threats, even if Mr. Trump’s latest social media posting constitutes the first time a US president embraces Israeli and Hamas concepts that violate international law and universally accepted moral norms.

These concepts involve the principle of collective punishment and the designation of civilians as legitimate targets.

Israeli and Hamas officials have both argued that there are no innocent others, whether Israelis or Palestinians. Israeli officials have sought to justify collective punishment by holding Gaza’s population rather than just the militants responsible for the October 7 attack.

Similarly, Hamas has justified random attacks against Israelis on the grounds that all Jewish Israelis are illegitimate settlers.

Israelis and Palestinians falsely hope that collective punishment that inflicts pain will spark uprisings against the others’ leaders while dehumanization will make the killing and abuse of civilians, including women and children, palatable.

Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posting echoed those sentiments.

Addressing Hamas, Mr. Trump thundered, “Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you. Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted! I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job; not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say. I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning!”

In the same Truth Social posting, Mr. Trump told the Gazan population, “To the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!”

Mr. Trump’s embrace of Israeli extremist language came hours after his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, welcomed to Washington Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an ultra-nationalist and Israeli West Bank settler who was persona non grata during the previous Biden administration because of his calls for expulsion of Gazans from the Strip.

“He is a terrorist. He’s Jewish, but he’s a terrorist. He wanted to blow up cars on the Ayalon highway, at rush hour, with gasoline. We caught him with 700 liters of the stuff,” said Yitzhak Ilan, a former deputy director of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, in a 2019 television interview.

Mr. Ilan interrogated Mr Smotrich when he was detained for three weeks in 2005. Mr. Smotrich has denied the allegation, noting that he was released and never charged.

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Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.