Hamas has indefinitely postponed the release of Israeli hostages who were set to be freed from the Gaza Strip this weekend, a spokesman said on Monday, accusing Israel’s government of violating an already fragile cease-fire agreement.
The move threatens to derail both the six-week truce agreed to last month and the prospects for agreement on a lasting end to the war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel was consulting with his top advisers on Monday night, and planned to move up a scheduled meeting with his security cabinet to Tuesday morning, a top official said.
Hours later, President Trump issued an ultimatum to Hamas on Monday evening, saying that if all Israeli hostages were not released from Gaza by 12 o’clock on Saturday, then the cease-fire agreement with Israel should be canceled and “all hell is going to break out.”
“Israel can override it, but from myself, Saturday at 12 o’clock, and if they’re not, they’re not here, all hell is going to break out,” Mr. Trump said while signing executive orders at the White House in front of reporters.
Asked whether he meant retaliation from Israel, the president said: “You’ll find out, and they’ll find out to. Hamas will find out what I mean.” Asked whether he would rule out any U.S. involvement after the Saturday deadline, Mr. Trump said, “We’ll see what happens.”
Both Hamas and Israel have accused each other of violating various aspects of the cease-fire agreement, but they have continued to release Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners each week.
The group’s statement on postponing the hostage release came shortly after the publication of a clip of a Fox News interview in which Mr. Trump said Palestinians would not be allowed to return to Gaza under his plan to relocate the entire population — which Hamas and much of the international community have rejected emphatically. Later, he said he could cut aid to Jordan and Egypt if they refused his demand to permanently take in most Palestinians from Gaza.
Earlier on Monday, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Hazem Qasem, said “new demands are not acceptable.”
“We have an agreement to implement,” Mr. Qasem told a Saudi-based TV station, al-Hadath. “We are open to ideas regarding a new form of Palestinian government and administration of Gaza, but not to the deportation.”
While another Hamas spokesman, Abu Obeida, said on Monday that this weekend’s hostage exchange was on hold, mediators from Qatar and Egypt could work with Israeli and Hamas negotiators to find a resolution before then. In January, mediators helped the two parties overcome a separate dispute.
On another front, the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, ordered changes to the policy of paying the families of Palestinians who are jailed or killed by Israel, even those involved in violent acts — a practice that has long been denounced by Israel and the United States. The language of Mr. Abbas’s decree is opaque, leaving it unclear how such payments would change.
In Gaza, a key point of tension between Israel and Hamas is the fate of the second phase of the deal, which calls for a permanent end to the fighting, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of more hostages and prisoners.
Talks on the details were supposed to begin last week, but Israel dispatched officials to Qatar without a mandate to negotiate that part of the deal, according to four Israeli officials, an official from a mediating country and a diplomat briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu has suggested that he won’t pursue the second phase of the deal if it means the war will end. The war has fallen short of his vows to wipe out Hamas as a fighting force and prevent it from asserting control over Gaza. For its part, Hamas has insisted that the second phase include the end of the conflict.
In a statement on Telegram on Monday, Mr. Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s military wing, accused Israel of a host of violations of the cease-fire agreement, including delaying the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, blocking the delivery of some humanitarian aid and opening fire on civilians.
In Gaza, after Hamas failed to release a female hostage who Israel said was to be freed in January under the agreement, Israel delayed the agreed return of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza. But the exchange eventually went forward, and the hostage was released.
COGAT, the Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, on Feb. 7 said that more than 12,000 trucks had entered Gaza since the agreement was set in place.
Widespread anger over the conditions of some of the hostages released so far — malnourished, buffeted by hostile crowds, paraded before cameras and, in some cases, made to give statements of thanks to Hamas militants — has drawn accusations in Israel that Hamas was not complying with the cease-fire agreement.
A spokesman for Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, called Hamas’s announcement on Monday “a complete violation of the cease-fire agreement and the hostage release deal.”
He said he had directed Israel’s military “to prepare on highest alert for every possible scenario in Gaza.” Referring to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel that began the war, he added, “We will not allow for the reality of Oct. 7 to return.”
The six-week cease-fire deal, which is scheduled to last until March 2, called for the release of 25 living hostages and the bodies of eight killed in exchange for the release of about 1,500 Palestinians from Israeli prisons. About half of the exchanges has been made.
It also required Israel’s military to withdraw from a key corridor bisecting Gaza that had prevented Palestinians who had fled south early in the war from returning to their homes in the northern part of the territory.
The Israeli military completed its withdrawal from most of the area, known as the Netzarim Corridor, on Sunday.
Chris Cameron, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Shawn McCreesh contributed reporting.
