Trump doesn’t just want ‘peaceful day or peaceful week’ in Israel-Hamas conflict, State Dept says

Bruce said later in the briefing that Witkoff’s original bridge proposal is not off the table if Hamas chooses to accept it.

By Mike Wagenheim, JNS

The U.S. State Department blamed Hamas for reported deaths of some 400 Gazans in Israel’s Tuesday airstrikes on the enclave.

“It’s a shame that Hamas has allowed this to occur, but look nowhere else other than the people who have facilitated this suffering from the beginning,” Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, told reporters during a Wednesday press briefing.

Bruce said that Gazans have been used “as cannon fodder” by “entities that have an investment in the suffering never ending.”

Her comments came after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, which the Trump administration brokered in January, came unglued after Hamas refused to accept a “bridge” proposal put forward by Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East.

The proposal would have extended the first phase of the ceasefire during negotiations for the second phase.

Israel declined to move forward with the second phase in a way that would let Hamas remain in power permanently.

“It was not a dynamic that was clearly going to end well in their rejecting it, but they did so anyway, and it’s a horrible result,” Bruce said, of Hamas.

JNS asked Bruce what the Trump administration’s game plan is to reimplement the ceasefire, whether asking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to concessions or leveraging Qatar to lean on Hamas.

Bruce told JNS that Trump “is not just wanting a peaceful day or a peaceful week.”

“The world has to be done with this situation,” she said.

Bruce added that Trump and Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, “have got an understanding of enough of a history of knowing what has happened, that we know it has to be handled differently.”

“The region understands this, and the Trump administration has this window to change the trajectory of what has been for decades and decades—coming up on 100 years—of carnage that is now unacceptable,” she said.

“So if it’s going to be done, everything that is necessary to get it done will be delivered by President Trump.”

Bruce said later in the briefing that Witkoff’s original bridge proposal is not off the table if Hamas chooses to accept it. The proposal “certainly is something that can be revisited,” she said.

The Foggy Bottom spokeswoman also commented on the Iranian foreign minister’s statement that the Islamic Republic won’t discuss a potential nuclear accord with Trump while the White House employs its “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.

“President Trump has an approach that he’s committed to because he wants a result, and we are seeing some of those results now,” Bruce said. “We will continue to see more.”

“The Houthis are seeing the results of what we are committed to do to make sure that things change on this planet, and I have no doubt Iran has noticed that,” she said.

At Trump’s direction, the U.S. military launched airstrikes at the Yemen-based Houthi rebels, an Iranian terror proxy, to break up its blockade of shipping and vessel movement in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The Houthis employed the blockade throughout the Israel-Hamas war until a ceasefire was reached but restarted their aggression after Israel decided two weeks ago to block aid going into Gaza, as negotiations on a continued ceasefire began to fail.

Bruce declined to comment on Lebanese media reports that Morgan Ortagus, deputy U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, has begun employing pressure on Lebanese leadership to enter into political negotiations with Israel on matters beyond the current Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in place.