[hanomantoto]

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – Senior official Hamas Sami Abu Zuhri said on Wednesday that Donald Trump will be tested on his statement that he can stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza within hours of taking office as U.S. president.

“We urge Trump to learn from [President Joe] Biden’s mistakes,” Abu Zuhri told Reuters.

During his campaign to return to the White House, Trump said Gaza could be developed “better than Monaco” due to its best location in the eastern Mediterranean.

He also said that he would have responded the same way Israel did after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, while urging his U.S. allies to “finish the job” as the country has “lost much international support”.

Additionally, he promised to end the ongoing international crisis, even saying that he could “stop wars with a telephone call.”

In Gaza, such statements bring hope. “We expect peace to come and the war to end with Trump because, in his election campaign, he said that he wants peace and calls for stopping the wars on Gaza and the Middle East,” said Ibrahim Alian, 33, from Gaza City, as reported by Arab News.

Like many of the territory’s residents, Alian has been displaced several times by the fighting. He said he also lost his father to the war. “God willing the war on the Gaza Strip will end and the situation will change,” he said.

Since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 43,400 Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children. The onslaught has spread to Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes and ground attacks have killed more than 3,000 people.

However, for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where violence has also surged since October last year, Trump’s victory was reason to fear for the future.

“Trump is firm in some decisions, but these decisions could serve Israel’s interests politically more than they serve the Palestinian cause,” said Samir Abu Jundi, a 60-year-old in Ramallah.

Another man who identified himself only by his nickname, Abu Mohammed, said he also saw no reason to believe Trump’s victory would be in favor of the Palestinians, saying “Nothing will change except more decline.”

REUTERS | ARAB NEWS

Editor’s Choice: Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad Condemns European Hypocrisy on War in Gaza

Click here to get the latest news updates from Tempo on Google News

 





hanomantoto