For more than a year, millions of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been homeless, facing severe food and medical shortages and the constant threat of Israeli airstrikes. Nearly 46,000 Gaza residents have died, local health officials said Wednesday. The area is mostly covered in rubble.
So when President-elect Donald J. Trump vowed that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages kidnapped from Israel during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, were not released within the next two weeks, people in Gaza wondered: do. If this is not hell, then what is hell?
“I’m not sure he understands the situation here. It’s already hell,” said Alaa Issam, 33, from Deir al-Bala in central Gaza.
Negotiations to end the war between Israel and Hamas have stalled, leaving Gaza’s civilians caught in the crossfire with little hope for the future.
“We have been murdered for 15 months,” Mr. Isam said. “We spent two cold winters in tents and two hot summers that ruined our food. “We suffered from hunger due to the brutal bombing that continued everywhere, and people were dying of hunger.”
“I don’t want to ruin the deal,” Trump told reporters Tuesday about the hostage exchange and ceasefire agreement still under discussion. Steven Witkoff, President Trump’s next top envoy to the Middle East, is expected to attend talks in Doha, Qatar, later this week.
But President Trump made it clear what the consequences would be if he refused to release the more than 100 hostages Hamas kidnapped from Israeli territory and held since it led the attack on Israel, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
“It wouldn’t be good for Hamas and, frankly, it wouldn’t be good for anyone,” he said. President Trump added, “If the deal is not completed before I take office, which is two weeks away, all hell will come in the Middle East.”
His comments were echoed across the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including by some civilians who questioned why Palestinians and not Israel should be punished if an agreement on the hostages is not reached by Jan. 20, when President Trump takes office. Yes.
Akram al-Satri, 47, a freelance translator from Khan Younis in southern Gaza, said he found it strange that Trump did not realize that Gaza had been deprived of all forms of life and thought he could add life to it. “Israel has spared no effort to change the lives of the people of Gaza into a life much more ugly than hell.”
He added, “All of us who witness bombs falling on our heads every day are living in a reality more destructive and miserable than hell.”
Most Gazans primarily blame Israel for the death and destruction around them, but many say Hamas is responsible for starting the war.
Several Gaza residents interviewed Wednesday said they were concerned about a continuation of the pro-Israel policies President Trump pursued during his first term from 2017 to 2021.
That year, the U.S. embassy in Israel moved to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians also claim as their capital, and the U.S. also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967.
