Hamas had only just confirmed that negotiations had begun on the second phase of a deal to release some of the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza when Donald Trump made his epoch-shifting announcement.

The US would take over the running of the enclave, displacing the population to other Arab countries and rebuilding it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”, he said calmly in the White House alongside Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

The prospect of ongoing cooperation with the terrorist group now appears to be, to say the least, imperilled.

Although, as Oct 7 proved, Hamas is at heart an anti-Semitic jihadist organisation; it presents itself to the Arab world as the legitimate government of Gaza and the true arm of Palestinian resistance against Israeli oppression.

How can it now work with negotiating partners who see no future for those people on the land they have so densely inhabited since 1948 and before?

Duly, “Ridiculous” and “absurd” was the initial response of Sami Abu Zuhri, the Hamas spokesman.