Leading GOP senator: Hamas must be given deadline to disarm or face renewed war

Hamas must given a deadline for relinquishing its weapons, after which Israel will have a green light to return to combat operations across the Gaza Strip, US Senator Lindsey Graham told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

“Put them on the clock,” said the South Carolina Republican, speaking from a Tel Aviv hotel. “If they don’t disarm in a credible way, then unleash Israel on ’em.”

The second phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza demands that Hamas disarm and the Strip be demilitarized. But leaders of the terror group have said publicly and consistently that they won’t give up all their weapons, and have never signed on to the second phase of the plan.

A central element of the vision is a multi-national International Stabilization Force for Gaza, but securing firm troop commitments from partner nations has been an ongoing challenge for the White House. The mandate for the ISF has yet to be cemented, but by all accounts it will not include direct combat with Hamas if the terror group refuses to disarm.

The international force has no chance of success  until “Hamas been disarmed,” said Graham. “There’s no international stabilizing force that’s going to come in here and fight.”

Earlier Sunday, Graham met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. His two-day visit comes a week before Netanyahu’s scheduled trip to the US to meet with Trump.

“My advice to the President [Trump] is until Hamas is dealt out of the game militarily and politically, the chance of success is pretty remote,” he said.

Even with the threat of renewed high-intensity Israeli military operations in Gaza, Graham said, there is little chance that Hamas will disarm voluntarily.

“These people are religious zealots,” he said. “They’re religious Nazis. I have no confidence, short of their demise, that they’re ever going to do anything other than what they promised to do. Did they stop wanting to destroy Israel? Did they change their stated goals? No.”

Iran, Hamas’s sponsor, is also “up to no good,” and still wants to attain a nuclear weapon, said Graham.

Netanyahu will present plans for a possible fresh attack on Iran to Trump during his upcoming visit to Washington, NBC News reported Saturday, citing several unnamed officials.

According to the report, Israel is growing increasingly concerned that Iran is rebuilding and even expanding its ballistic missile production in the wake of the nations’ 12-day war in June.

Israel is also worried that Iran is rebuilding its nuclear enrichment program, which was heavily damaged by Israeli and American strikes, the report added.

If Iran is indeed trying to enrich uranium again and to expand their ballistic missile program, said Graham, “it’d be in our national interest to hit them now.”

A long memory

Hezbollah in Lebanon must also be given a deadline to disarm, or face an Israeli attack, he urged.

A November 2024 US-backed ceasefire — whose terms were widely seen as an acknowledgement by Hezbollah that it badly miscalculated in choosing war with Israel the day after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 invasion — required the disarmament of the Iran-aligned terror group, starting in areas adjacent to Israel.

Lebanon is close to completing the disarmament of Hezbollah south of the Litani River, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said on Saturday.

However, Israel has questioned the effectiveness of the Lebanese military, and Hezbollah itself has repeatedly rejected calls to surrender its arms.

Graham urged the US to join in on any potential attack on Hezbollah: “I would like to fly with Israel. I would like the United States to participate in military operations, in the aerial side, against Hezbollah, if that’s what it takes to knock them out.”

“I want our fingerprints on that,” Graham continued. “Let me tell you why: We had a lot of brave young Marines die at the hands of these bastards and we have a very long memory.”

In October 1983, some 241 US military personnel — including 220 Marines — died in a Hezbollah truck bombing of a US Marines barracks in Lebanon. Less than a year later, the terror group bombed the American embassy in Beirut, killing 23 people.

A landmark normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, something Graham has long pushed, will only happen “if you deal with the Iranian proxies,” he argued.

Turning to Syria, Israel’s other northern neighbor, Graham insisted that the country’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa is “probably our best bet.”

The IDF has been deployed to nine posts inside southern Syria for nearly a year, since former president Bashar al-Assad’s regime was brought down, mostly within a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the border between the countries.

Trump earlier this month warned Israel against destabilizing Syria and its new leadership, days after IDF soldiers battled gunmen in the country’s south, and said he is “very satisfied” with the country’s performance under Sharaa.

Sharaa’s Islamist-led alliance launched a lightning offensive in late November last year and took Damascus, bringing a sudden end to more than five decades of Assad family rule and over a decade of civil war.

Sharaa has made progress abroad, including restoring Syria’s international standing and winning sanctions relief, but Israel remains wary, and has yet to conclude a security arrangement with the former jihadist leader.

“Watch him close,” Graham warned. “I think he’s probably got limited capability — that’s for sure. But I’m willing to work with him. I don’t want to ask Israel to ignore security concerns terms coming out of Syria. Trust but verify is probably a good term to use here.”

Republican civil war ‘real’

Graham said that the brewing conflict among leading conservative figures is “real,” but that he is not concerned that the GOP will turn against Israel.

“I’m not alarmed because I know where most Republicans are,” he said.

Key figures in the Make America Great Again movement took to the stage at a Turning Point USA conference in Phoenix last week to tear into each other, blasting opponents for cozying up to fascists or accusing them of besmirching the memory of the assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Graham said that “75, 80 percent of Republicans are firmly in Israel’s camp.”

The US and Israel “have common enemies and common values, democracy, and [Israel is] surrounded by a bunch of people that would kill us if they could get to us,” he added, arguing that “whatever we do to help Israel is a great investment.”

“If we had to replace what the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet did to help us, it’d be impossible,” Graham continued. “It’s in America’s interest to have a strong, vibrant Israel. Anything less would put us at risk. I think that’s not going to change anytime soon.”

He said that he was urging Israel to cement a defense agreement with the US, similar to the one under discussion between Washington and Riyadh.

The US-Israel security relationship “is assumed,” Graham warned. “It doesn’t formally exist. If you ever wanted to have a defense relationship, which I think would be beneficial in the United States, now is the time to do it.”

Agencies contributed to this report.