(TNND) — The incoming administration is pushing hard for Hamas to release remaining hostages, with President-elect Donald Trump vowing Tuesday that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages aren’t released by his inauguration in less than two weeks.

Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is headed back to Qatar, where negotiations are taking place on a ceasefire deal.

“And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone,” Trump said if Hamas doesn’t release the hostages, which includes several Americans. “All hell will break out. I don’t have to say any more, but that’s what it is.”

Witkoff expressed optimism in a deal being close.

Qatar and Egypt have served as intermediaries between Hamas and Israel.

The sides are reportedly discussing a three-phase plan that would include a partial release of the roughly 100 remaining hostages, a multiweek halt in fighting, a release of Palestinian prisoners, and a surge of aid to the war-torn Gaza Strip.

Hamas took about 250 hostages into Gaza in October 2023. Reports indicate about 60 of the remaining hostages are believed to be alive.

But we really don’t have a good count on how many living hostages remain, said Raphael Cohen, an expert in foreign policy, military strategy and the Middle East at RAND.

There’s not a single person in charge of Hamas, he said.

And communication is not good between Hamas leaders involved in the negotiations and Hamas officials in Gaza.

Hamas’ leader and the reported mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks, Yahya Sinwar, was killed in October. Before that, Hamas’ political head, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed.

Cohen said Hamas has four or five individuals involved in the negotiations in Qatar.

Plus, while he said Hamas took the lion’s share of Oct. 7 hostages, Cohen said disparate insurgent groups loosely affiliated with Hamas also took some hostages.

That makes counting the living hostages difficult.

“There’s an irony here … the more effective Israel is at the military operations, the harder it’s going to be for people sitting in a different country to know exactly what’s happening on the battlefield,” Cohen said.

He said there are some major sticking points in the negotiations.

Israel is absolutely committed to its goal of eliminating Hamas. And it wants to retain security control over Gaza after the war.

Hamas wants a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

“I think the temporary ceasefire is looking more likely,” Cohen said.

The war is over 450 days old, and both sides might be more motivated to seek an end, Cohen said.

The Israelis have already done a lot of the damage they wanted to do to Hamas, he said.

And, Cohen said, “Hamas really doesn’t have that many cards to play at this point.”

But lasting peace is far from certain.

“You may very well be able to get to phase one but not phase two” of a ceasefire deal, Cohen said.

So, Israeli and American officials want to maximize the number of hostages they can get released right away.

Trump’s envoy might not have an official role in the negotiations, but Cohen said Trump’s team is absolutely involved.

“More so than in other presidential transitions, Trump is casting a shadow over the current negotiations,” he said.

All parties are keenly aware that there will be a new administration in the White House in less than two weeks.

Hostage recovery is important to Trump, according to Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University who has studied hostage-taking.

Gilbert wrote last month about how U.S. hostage policy might change under Trump.

She said Trump values hostage releases from both a policy perspective as well as a personal one – an activity she said reinforces Trump’s view of himself as a great dealmaker.

But she said Trump’s claims of getting dozens of hostages released with no concessions during his first term aren’t accurate, noting the Trump administration brokered prisoner swaps.

Gilbert wrote that Trump is likely to cooperate less with Western allies on hostage recovery and prevention.

And she said Trump might leverage the threat of force more in an effort to bring hostages home.

Cohen said Trump’s “hell will break out” comment during a news conference Tuesday was left up to interpretation.

“I think in the sense that it increases pressure on both sides to come to an agreement, I think that’s helpful. … He’s repeated the statement now multiple times, so presumably he means some variant of it,” Cohen said.

But he said Trump has lots of levers to pull to put pressure on both sides.

To apply pressure on Hamas, he could simply not lean on the Israelis to hold back military action, which President Joe Biden’s administration has done to varying degrees.

He could speed up arms shipments to Israel.

Or he could turn up the heat on the Egyptians, Qataris or Turks (a lot of Hamas operatives living outside of Gaza are in Turkey) as a way of conveying pressure on Hamas.

The Israelis are very concerned about the Iranians, so Cohen said Trump could leverage U.S. support against Iran as a condition of Israel brokering a deal with Hamas.

Will Trump be more successful in ending the war than Biden?

“I don’t know,” Cohen said.

But he said there certainly seems to be momentum for a deal.