The administration of US President Donald Trump will give Israel free rein to hunt down Hamas, Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“I think the Trump administration is going to give Israel the leeway to destroy Hamas because that’s non-negotiable.” That was the key message the Republican senator conveyed to his Israeli counterparts during his visit to Israel this week.
A strong supporter of Israel, Graham told the Post that if negotiations with Hamas and attempts to free the hostages fail, Jerusalem would have no choice but to eliminate the terrorist organization.
“I think they should go in and destroy Hamas, just as we destroyed the Germans and the Japanese. There is no future for the Palestinians until Hamas is gone,” he said on Monday in Tel Aviv. “No one in Washington has told me that they are restraining Israel’s ability to return to the fight if necessary.”
Graham, the senior Republican senator from South Carolina, led a delegation of six bipartisan senators who met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and other senior Israeli officials. One of the main topics of discussion was Iran.
“I hope the US will provide Israel with the military capabilities it lacks to ensure it can deliver a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear program,” he told the Post.
The senator believes that due to military operations over the past year and a half, Israel is now capable of delivering a decisive strike.
“I believe now is the time to eliminate the threat the world faces from a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Graham is not optimistic about Trump’s attempts to reach a diplomatic solution regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
“I think the likelihood of a successful negotiation in which the Ayatollah [Ali Khamenei] gives up his nuclear ambitions is almost zero,” he said, adding that he believes that Trump should set a deadline for diplomatic efforts and that he plans to write a letter to the president.
“I want to put it on a clock – give them 60 days and clearly outline what a good outcome would look like. In my opinion, it should be exactly like Libya, which completely abolished its nuclear program.”
Trump's Gaza plan
Trump has been pressing Arab countries in recent weeks to support his plan to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to a housing project to be built in Jordan and Egypt.
“The US will own Gaza,” said the president, who outlined a vision for the full reconstruction of the mostly destroyed enclave under American supervision.
“I have no interest in owning Gaza. I have no interest in getting Americans involved in Gaza,” Graham told the Post. He is the only senior Republican publicly criticizing the plan. “There’s very little appetite in South Carolina for us to ‘own’ Gaza. But as a result of his statement, the Arab states are now engaging in ways they haven’t before, developing their own plans. So in Trump’s world, this is actually working.”
In recent years, Graham has been one of the leading American officials pushing for a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. As always, when meeting with the senator, I asked him about the chances of reaching such an agreement. “I think once you neutralize Iran’s nuclear ambitions and destroy Hamas, the likelihood of normalization is very high – about 80%.”