President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he is Israel's "best friend" ever and repeated a threat that there would be "hell to pay" if Hamas did not release the hostages by the time he is inaugurated.

Trump made the comments when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt if he would provide “uninterrupted” military aid to Israel, saying: “I am the best friend Israel has ever had. Look at what happened with all the things I did for Israel, including having Jerusalem as its capital, building the embassy.”

The president-elect, who will take office in less than two weeks, said that anything “big” that has happened to Israel in recent years “has been done through him,” including the normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, known as the Abraham Accords.

Trump was then asked what he meant when he said there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released, a threat he first made more than a month ago. “If those hostages are not released by the time I take office (at noon on Jan. 20), there will be hell to pay,” he told Hewitt. “I don’t think I have to get into that anymore.”

In his original threat, Trump appeared to suggest that the United States might take direct action against Hamas. “Those responsible will be hit harder than anyone in the long and storied history of the United States of America,” he wrote on Truth Social on December 1. “Release the hostages now!”

Hardliners in Israel celebrated Trump’s victory and view his next term as an opportunity to annex the West Bank. In a sign that the Trump administration is likely to back such a move, Trump appointed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a strong supporter of settlements and annexation of the occupied West Bank, as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

“I believe that Israel has a title to Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said during a visit to a West Bank settlement in 2017. “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as the West Bank. It is Judea and Samaria. There is no such thing as settlements. They are communities, they are neighborhoods, they are cities. There is no such thing as occupation.”