Ahmed Kamel – Egypt Daily News
In a week marked by sharpened rhetoric overseas and high-profile legal action at home, President Donald Trump issued a stark warning to Hamas while a former senior aide Bolton was indicted on classified-records charges, underscoring how security, policy and politics are colliding in an increasingly volatile moment.
Trump on Thursday posted a blunt ultimatum on Truth Social: “If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.” The president later sought to narrow the scope of his language in remarks from the Oval Office, saying he did not expect U.S. forces to lead any new offensive and suggesting that “people very close, very nearby” could act “under our auspices.”
Still, his threat represented a sharp escalation from the upbeat tone he struck when a ceasefire deal was first announced just days earlier at one point declaring the war “over.”
The president’s shift reflected growing unease in Washington and Jerusalem over reports that armed elements inside Gaza had exploited the truce to reassert control and to punish Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel. Israeli officials have publicly accused Hamas of violating the agreement, and footage and accounts of summary violence inside Gaza have raised alarms among humanitarians and diplomats working to stabilize the situation and secure the release of hostages.
Trump’s warnings come amid a delicate diplomatic effort to translate a temporary cessation of fighting into a more durable settlement. He said that the war could resume “as soon as I say the word,” and repeatedly stressed that Hamas would ultimately have to disarm or “we will disarm them.” After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said he expected Hamas to honor its commitments and warned, “If they don’t behave, we’ll take care of it.”
The president’s rhetoric has multiple domestic and international audiences: it signals to Israeli leaders that the United States stands ready to apply pressure if the truce collapses, reassures hawkish supporters demanding decisive action, and warns Hamas that the ceasefire is conditional. But analysts warn that such high-profile pronouncements risk hardening positions on the ground, where local militias and security vacuums can produce quick and violent shifts.
The fragile nature of ceasefires in asymmetrical conflicts means that language from political leaders can have outsized consequences for civilians and for the work of mediators and humanitarian organizations.
At the same time, the U.S. political and legal landscape remains turbulent. In a separate development Thursday, a federal grand jury in Maryland returned an indictment charging former national security adviser John Bolton with multiple counts related to the alleged unlawful transmission and retention of classified national defense information.
Sources familiar with the matter said the indictment includes eight counts of unlawful transmission and 10 counts of unlawful retention.
Prosecutors allege Bolton used a personal email account and messaging application to transmit at least eight documents containing material classified at levels from Secret to Top Secret to unauthorized recipients. Seven of those transmissions are said to have occurred during Bolton’s tenure in the Trump White House in 2018 and 2019, with another allegedly taking place days after his removal in September 2019.
The ten documents prosecutors say were unlawfully retained were reportedly seized during searches of Bolton’s Maryland home and his Washington office last August and are alleged to contain intelligence on prospective attacks, foreign partners’ willingness to share intelligence, missile launch plans, leaders of adversarial states and covert U.S. government plans.
Bolton has strenuously denied wrongdoing. His attorneys maintain he never mishandled classified information and contend that documents located in searches were no longer classified. Bolton has long been a target of the president’s anger since leaving the administration and publishing a candid memoir that the first Trump White House unsuccessfully sought to block. Federal officials reportedly flagged concerns that portions of that book could have included highly classified material.
The Bolton indictment arrives in a climate where other figures have recently faced federal charges: the article relays that prosecutors have also indicted former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James moves critics describe as part of what they call a campaign of retribution by Trump against perceived political opponents. Comey and James have denied wrongdoing.
Trump himself has a long-running classified-documents case; he pleaded not guilty in 2023 to 40 counts tied to the retention and obstruction of hundreds of classified records after leaving office, though that prosecution was later paused when he was re-elected due to Department of Justice policy regarding charging a sitting president.
Together, the president’s incendiary language toward Hamas and the high-profile legal actions against prominent figures inside and outside his orbit reflect the deep intertwining of foreign policy and domestic politics under the current administration. The two threads the threatened resumption or escalation of force in the Middle East and the intensifying litigation and indictments at home feed into one another, shaping perceptions of executive authority, the limits of presidential rhetoric, and the role of the Justice Department amid politically fraught investigations.
Legal questions remain about the consequences of Bolton’s indictment, including how prosecutors will prove the transmission counts and whether seized materials retain their classified status. Operationally, Trump’s suggestion that non-U.S. actors could carry out strikes “under our auspices” raises complex questions about coordination, accountability and the risk of further escalation.
For now, negotiators and officials on both fronts are left to navigate uncertainty. Diplomats and humanitarian groups working to consolidate the ceasefire face the immediate task of preventing reprisals and securing safe passage and aid. At the same time, the Justice Department’s actions ensure that legal battles and political warfare are likely to remain central features of the national conversation in the weeks ahead even as leaders in Washington and abroad try to steer both conflict and accountability into more stable channels.
