With Hamas violating key provisions of the Gaza cease-fire agreement, initial cracks are beginning to show among Arab countries that earlier this week seemed united in support of President Trump’s plan to end the war. 

“If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them,” Mr. Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. The posting reversed an initial assessment by the president, who told reporters earlier this week that armed Hamas remnants would be charged with preventing lawlessness until a multi-national stabilization force arrives in Gaza. 

Mr. Trump’s statement followed gruesome video clips that flooded social media showing armed Hamas men executing rivals in cold blood on the streets of Gaza City. The executions started immediately after the cease-fire came into effect earlier this week, and were conducted across several days. Hamas seemed intent on distributing the images to ensure its continued control of the strip.  

“This is an interim period,” a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, tells the Sun. “Hamas will cede nothing. They need to ensure their control in Gaza, and secure their place in the post-war Palestinian leadership.” 

As countries gear up to implement the next stages of Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, Israel says Hamas already has violated the first phase. Several Arab and Muslim countries that were envisioned as backers of the plan — either as part of an interim stabilizing force or as financiers of the strip’s rehabilitation — are bickering among themselves, as some accuse others of supporting Hamas.    

Israel announced Thursday that Hamas was lying about not being able to locate bodies of deceased hostages. Returning all 48 hostages within 72 hours after the cease-fire came into effect was part of Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan that ended combat. Hamas released all twenty living hostages, but only returned the remains of nine deceased abductees, leaving 19 bodies remaining inside the strip. 

On Thursday Israel blocked entry to a group of 80 Turkish volunteers who intended to arrive at Gaza, equipped with bulldozers and other heavy machinery. The Turks claimed that they were there to help Hamas find the missing bodies that the terror organization claims it is unable to locate.

Israel, though, says that according to its own intelligence, Hamas knows where all but five of the remaining bodies are buried. “Hamas can immediately return the bodies of the abducted,” an unidentified Jerusalem official told Israeli press reporters. “There’s no reason to allow Turkish crews into Gaza.”  

Turkey has long supported Hamas and its parent movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. Another such supporter, Qatar, is already sending crews to Gaza, even as other Gulf countries warn against allowing the gas-rich emirate to gain a foothold in the strip. 

“Relying on Qatar, which supports the Muslim Brotherhood, is a mistake,” an unidentified Saudi official said, according to the Doha-funded Middle East Eye website. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have expressed growing frustration with Washington over what they see as increasing American concessions to Qatar, according to the report.

Mr. Trump has praised Qatar’s role in mediating the Gaza cease-fire, and also cited Turkey’s help. “Hamas has no support,” Mr. Trump said Thursday. “Hamas only had the support of Iran.”

Yet, Saudi-led Gulf allies that have long viewed Doha as a threat to their countries and only grudgingly ended a boycott of the emirate, claim that Qatar remains on Hamas’s side. 

“Qatar will bring Hamas back,” a senior Saudi official told Israel Hayom newspaper, adding that “excessive Qatari involvement” in Gaza will lead to the “collapse” of Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan.