JD Vance Admits There Will Be ‘Fits and Starts’ to Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Deal
Vice President J.D. Vance took questions on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Sunday, where he was asked about Israeli Defense Forces claims that Hamas has already broken the ceasefire agreement that President Donald Trump and Arab leaders signed in Egypt this week.
Fox News’s Trey Yingst reported Sunday morning that the Israeli military was striking the Gaza Strip after two separate Hamas attacks took place inside Israeli controlled territory, one by RPG and one by sniper.
The vice president said this was obviously not ideal, but that he believed the ceasefire deal had still paved the way for lasting peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors.
“Well, look, it’s going to be complicated,” Vance said. “I mean, the best case scenario — meaning if this thing absolutely produces that sustainable longterm peace that the president and I hope that it will — there are going to be fits and starts.”
He continued: “There are going to be, you know — Hamas is going to fire on Israel. Israel is going to have to respond, of course. There are going to be moments where you have people within Gaza where you’re not quite sure what they’re actually doing. So, we think that it has the best chance for a sustainable peace. But even if it does that, it’s going to have hills and valleys, and we’re going to have to monitor the situation.”
One reporter then asked about President Trump telling Fox News that he had no “hard timeline” for the disarming of Hamas.
“Well, the president is actually making a very important point here, which is that we don’t actually know even what the reality on the ground is there. And when we talk about Hamas, you’re talking about 40 different cells. It’s disjointed. Some of those cells will probably honor the ceasefire. Many of those cells, as we saw some evidence of today, will not,” Vance said, continuing:
Before we actually can ensure that Hamas is properly disarmed, that’s going to require, as we know, some of these Bulf Arab states to get forces in there to actually apply some some law and order and some security-keeping on the ground. So, I think it would be kind of absurd for the president to say, ‘Well, Hamas is going to be disarmed three or four days from now.’ We don’t even have the security infrastructure in place, meaning the Gulf Arab states, our allies, don’t have the security infrastructure in place yet to confirm that Hamas is disarmed until you actually go a little bit down the path…of this peace mission of this 20-point peace plan, we’re not going to be able to say with confidence that everybody is doing what we want them to do.
Watch the clips above via CNN.
