On Saturday, Hamas gunmen paraded three skeletally thin Israeli hostages for a propaganda video in which they were forced to thank their captors before their handover to the Red Cross. One of the hostages, Eli Sharabi, returned to Israel to learn that his wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, had been murdered on Oct. 7.

It was heartbreaking and grotesque. Other hostages are reported by The Times to have spent their captivity bound, tortured, deprived of food and denied medical care for shrapnel wounds and other injuries. Some have barely seen sunlight in nearly 500 days.

By Monday, Hamas had declared that it was postponing the release of additional hostages “until further notice,” claiming Israeli violations of a six-week truce agreement. Hours later, President Trump warned that “all hell is going to break out” if Hamas didn’t release all remaining hostages by noon on Saturday. On Tuesday,fef777 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel warned that Israel would resume “intense fighting” if hostages were not released by that time. Trump also warned Jordan and Egypt that he would cut off American aid if they refused to accept Gazan refugees, adding that those refugees may not have the right to return to Gaza.

The president’s threats are long overdue. Anyone who thinks that Hamas can be allowed to continue to torture Israelis, tyrannize Palestinians and remain the ruling power in Gaza, free to someday set fire to the region again, needs to be disabused of the idea. That goes especially for Arab states like Qatar and Egypt that depend on U.S. protection and largess even as they have harbored Hamas leaders or failed to stop the group from arming itself to the teeth before Oct. 7.

Where do we go from here?

The administration should give the region a choice between two possible options. One is that Gazan civilians leave the territory, principally to neighboring Egypt, so that Hamas and its labyrinth of tunnels can more thoroughly be destroyed by a renewed Israeli offensive without risk to innocent life. Israel should not reoccupy the Strip, and the return of those civilians to Gaza must never be closed off. But it should also depend on those civilians forswearing allegiance to Hamas, along with a de-Hamasification program for Gaza that bars former Hamas members from any positions of power and that publicly exposes their apparatus of repression against ordinary Gazans.

The second option is that Hamas’s chieftains be pressured by their patrons into exile, so that Gazans might rebuild their lives under better leadership. This is what happened in 1982 when the Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasir Arafat and his minions were forced out of Lebanon to exile in Tunis. Exile is much better than Hamas’s cruel rulers deserve, but it’s an option that spares a lot of bloodshed.

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He was one of several residents along Florida’s Gulf Coast who have relied on pedal power to get around before Hurricane Helene makes landfall on Thursday night.

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