Trump says US to investigate Israel’s assassination of Hamas official as ceasefire violation

The US is examining whether Israel violated a Gaza ceasefire by assassinating a senior Hamas official, President Donald Trump said on Monday.

Raad Saad was killed alongside three others on Saturday when his car was targeted near al-Nabulsi square in western Gaza City, according to Israeli media reports.

Saad was a senior member of al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing. He was said to be second in rank only to the group’s latest military chief, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, according to Reuters.

Israel has repeatedly violated a ceasefire that was signed on 10 October and guaranteed by Egypt, Qatar and the US.

Over 350 Palestinians have been killed by Israel, according to what Gaza’s Government Media Office says are at least 738 violations.

Israel has drastically restricted the amount of aid and medical supplies that can enter Gaza and has prevented the reopening of the enclave’s Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

The Trump administration has been generally quiet on these violations in public. The assassination of Saad, however, could complicate the Trump administration’s plans to move the ceasefire forward.

Middle East Eye reported in October that US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met senior Hamas officials, including Khalil al-Hayya, in Egypt‘s Sharm el-Sheikh resort and personally guaranteed an end to the war as an assurance to Hamas’s senior leaders.

When given the opportunity to address his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump downplayed reports in Israeli media that he was angry with his counterpart.

“Israel and I have gotten along very well. My relationship with Bibi Netanyahu has been obviously a very good one,” Trump told reporters in the White House.

‘Alternate Safe Communities’

The Trump administration has dispatched allies of Kushner to Tel Aviv to work on a plan that would cement Gaza’s division in half, by building so-called “Alternate Safe Communities” in the Israeli-occupied portion of Gaza. Israel has imposed a full blockade of the enclave, while its troops physically occupy around 50 percent of Gaza’s landmass.

The plans to divide Gaza have unnerved states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Egypt, and Turkey. Trump needs their political, economic, and manpower support to deploy an international stabilisation force to Gaza. The United Nations Security Council approved a mandate for the force in November, but it has yet to deploy.

US officials have said that they expect it to be ready in 2026, but Trump said the force was already operating. MEE spoke with three western and Arab officials on Monday, along with analysts. No one was aware of the force operating.

“I think that, in a form, it’s already running,” Trump said. ”More and more countries are coming into it. They’re already in, but they’ll send any number of troops that I ask them to send.”