U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz on Thursday expressed strong backing for renewed Israeli military operations against the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.
“Israel has every right to defend its people from Hamas terrorists. The ceasefire would have been extended if Hamas released all remaining hostages. Instead, they chose war,” tweeted Waltz.
Also Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that U.S. President Donald Trump “fully supports” Israel’s decision to resume its offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
“The president made it very clear to Hamas that if they did not release all of the hostages, there would be all hell to pay,” Leavitt said, per pool reports. “Unfortunately, Hamas chose to play games in the media with lives.”
“This situation, let’s not forget, is completely the fault of Hamas when they launched that brutal attack on Israel on Oct. 7,” she said, adding that Trump “fully supports Israel and the IDF and the actions that they’ve taken in recent days.”
A day earlier, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce emphasized Hamas’s disregard for the well-being of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“It’s a shame that Hamas has allowed this to occur, but look nowhere else other than the people who have facilitated this suffering from the beginning,” she said.
Bruce noted that Gazans have been used “as cannon fodder” by “entities that have an investment in the suffering never ending.”
Her comments came after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, which the Trump administration brokered in January, came unglued when Hamas refused to accept a “bridge” proposal put forward by Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. The proposal would have extended the first phase of the ceasefire during negotiations for the second phase.
“It was not a dynamic that was clearly going to end well in [Hamas] rejecting it, but they did so anyway, and it’s a horrible result,” Bruce said.