A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump is again warning Hamas it must release all the remaining hostages who were seized on October 7.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I don't want to do two, and then we do another two in another week, and then we do four in three weeks. No. No. They either have them out by Saturday at 12 o'clock or all bets are off.
MARTÍNEZ: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also set a Saturday deadline while threatening to end the ceasefire in Gaza and, as he put it, resume intense combat. Three hostages were scheduled to be released this week, and with nine in total still believed to be alive and part of the first phase of the deal. So is the agreement for Gaza unraveling? Let's bring in Dennis Ross. He's a former American envoy to the Middle East, who served as the point man on the Mideast peace process in the administrations of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Welcome to the show.
DENNIS ROSS: Good to be with you.
MARTÍNEZ: So let's start with laying all this out, because these ultimatums from Trump and Netanyahu came after Hamas said it would delay the next hostage release. And it did so after accusing Israel of reneging on the terms of the first phase of the agreement. So where do you think this leaves the ceasefire in Gaza?
ROSS: Well, it looks fraught. By everything you've just described, I'm not sure that this first phase of ceasefire won't still go ahead. It's very interesting that yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed President Trump. Then there was a background unattributed statement by a senior official presumed to be Netanyahu, saying all the hostage had to come out. And then a short while later, there was another statement released in which it said, no, it will just be the three. There's signals from Hamas that they're prepared to go ahead on Saturday. I think what we're going to see is this will go ahead for now.
Netanyahu is under enormous pressure from the far right of his coalition, which basically wants to resume the war. But he's also under enormous pressure from most of Israel, because as the Israeli public has seen hostages released, including the most recent releases in which the hostages looked emaciated and looked as if they were Holocaust survivors, that has not reduced the pressure to get all the hostages out who are still alive. The idea that he would not pursue that when there's still a chance to do so, I think, creates a huge pressure on him. So I think at least for the moment, we'll probably see this go ahead, but whether or not you can complete the first phase and go into the second phase, I think that's a huge question mark in my mind.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. Now, this isn't the first time President Trump has threatened similar consequences. He vowed that there will be hell to pay unless the hostages were freed before he took office and just before Israel and Hamas agreed to that ceasefire. Do you think this kind of strategy is effective?
ROSS: I think it was effective before he became president because it gave leverage, I think, to Egypt and to Qatar. They could go to Hamas and say, look, it'll be - if we can get this stopped before he comes in, it'll be difficult to resume the war once he's in. That's one thing before he becomes president. Now that he's president, the idea that all hell will break loose from a Hamas standpoint, they can say, what can the Israelis do to us that they haven't done already? Now, they may want the respite. I think they probably do, and they certainly want to see the war end because that's their chance, in their mind, to somehow recover.
But the fact is at this point, there's not a whole lot that Israel can threaten to do that they haven't done already. And it's not - there's nothing that the - that the United States can do that Israel hasn't done. So I'm not - I don't see how that per se affects Hamas. Again, the question in my mind is, does it create more of an incentive to Qatar and Egypt, who do have some leverage on Hamas? That may be the one area where what the president threatens actually has an effect.
MARTÍNEZ: What did you make of President Trump's suggestion remove all Palestinians from Gaza? Did you think that made things worse?
ROSS: Well, I don't think it helped it from the standpoint of are we going to get this done now? The irony is what it reflects is a kind of look at this problem. I would say, from a practical standpoint, how are you going to rebuild Gaza when you have 2 million people there? It was a kind of a practical standpoint, but it didn't reflect, I think, an understanding that Palestinians, Arabs fear the way the Israelis want to resolve the conflict is by having all Palestinians leave. That's not sustainable in the Middle East. There is a practical issue here. Has the president raised something that gives Arabs a reason to come with a constructive, practical, tangible alternative and not just one with slogans?
MARTÍNEZ: That's former U.S. Ambassador Dennis Ross. Ambassador, thanks.
ROSS: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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