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US President called three times for talks: American sources
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Trump’s handling of Qatar attack, Iran war helped influence Hamas
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No formal written guarantees for the Palestinian group
By Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Steve Holland and Andrew Mills
Cairo/Washington/Dubai, – Hamas has called Donald Trump a racist, a “recipe for chaos” and a man with an absurd approach to Gaza.
But an extraordinary phone call last month helped convince Hamas that the US president could block Israel on a peace deal even if the group surrendered all hostages, giving it leverage in the war in Gaza, two Palestinian officials said. In a widely publicized call at the time, Trump phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after a meeting at the White House in September to apologize to Qatar’s prime minister for the Israeli strike on a residential compound housing Hamas political leaders in the emirate’s capital Doha.
The two officials said Trump’s handling of the Qatar bombing, which failed to kill targeted Hamas officials including key negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, gave the group more confidence that he was capable of standing up to Netanyahu and that he was serious about ending the war in Gaza. Now, after the Trump-brokered ceasefire was signed on Wednesday, the militant group has put even more faith in the words of the man who just this year proposed driving Palestinians out of Gaza and rebuilding it as a US-controlled beach resort. Under the agreement, which took effect on Friday, Hamas agreed to release its hostages without an agreement on Israel’s full withdrawal. Two other Palestinian Hamas officials acknowledged that it was a risky gambit that depended on the US President being so invested in the deal that he would not let it fail.
A Hamas official said, Hamas leaders are well aware that their gamble could backfire. They fear that once the hostages are released, Israel could resume its military campaign, as it did after the January ceasefire that also included Trump’s team.
However, as Hamas gathered for indirect talks with Israel at a conference center in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Hamas was so reassured by the presence of Trump’s closest confidants and regional stalwarts that it signed the ceasefire, even though it left many of the group’s main demands unresolved, including steps toward a Palestinian state.
A Hamas official told Reuters that Trump’s eagerness was felt “overwhelmingly” at the conference center. Trump personally called three times during the marathon session, a senior US official said, between his son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff between Israeli and Qatari negotiators.
No certainty for subsequent steps While this could pave the way for ending the war, which began with a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, there is no certainty that the subsequent steps envisioned in Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan will materialize.
But Trump’s handling of the attacks on Qatar and the ceasefire that ended Israel’s 12-day war with Iran in June have led Hamas negotiators to believe that the U.S. president will not allow Israel to restart fighting once the hostages are released, two Palestinian officials and another source briefed on the talks said.
They were among five Palestinian officials, including three from Hamas, as well as two senior US officials and five other sources briefed on the talks, who spoke to Reuters for this story.
Trump’s allies saw their anger at Netanyahu over the Qatar strike as an opportunity to pressure the Israeli leader to accept a framework to end the Gaza war, according to a Washington source familiar with the matter.
Trump, who has developed ties with Gulf states important to his broader diplomatic and economic policies, considers the Emir of Qatar a friend and does not like watching images of the attacks on television, a senior White House official said, calling the strike a turning point that united the Arab world.
A Palestinian official in Gaza briefed on negotiations and mediation efforts said Trump’s public promise that no such Israeli attack against Qatar would happen again had given him credibility in the eyes of Hamas and other regional actors.
“The fact that they have given Qatar security guarantees that Israel will not attack them again increases Hamas’ confidence that the ceasefire will hold,” said Jonathan Reinhold of the department of political studies at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
Hamas also heeded Trump’s public order to cease hostilities toward Iran and Israel, the Palestinian official in Gaza said, rejecting Trump’s demand on his Truth social platform that Israeli aircraft “turn around and head for home” from the planned bombing of Iran, hours after declaring a ceasefire in their 12-day war in June.
“Despite being dramatic, he does what he says,” the official said, adding that it showed Trump was willing to get Israel to abide by the ceasefire.
talks were stalled on Tuesday
Trump announced his overall plan during Netanyahu’s White House visit on September 29, and Hamas gave its conditional consent four days later, which the US president took as a green signal.
As recently as Tuesday, talks on how to implement the plan were stuck over several issues, including how quickly and how far Israeli forces would withdraw from Gaza to allow Hamas to regroup and release hostages, an official familiar with the talks told Reuters. Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and Türkiye were unable to move things forward, the source said.
To break the impasse, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani decided on Tuesday he would travel to Sharm al-Sheikh, the source said, while Witkoff and Kushner flew in on Wednesday morning, and talks began around noon.
The presence of NATO power Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was also significant because of Ankara’s strong ties with Hamas and President Tayyip Erdogan’s recent meeting with Trump, after which he said Trump had requested he help convince Hamas to accept the plan.
For two years Hamas has insisted that it would release the hostages only in exchange for Israel’s full withdrawal and a final end to the conflict. Israel has said it will end fighting only when all hostages are returned and Hamas is destroyed.
Nobody has completely found their way. Israel will remain in about half of Gaza for the foreseeable future, while Hamas will survive as an organization, and Trump’s plan includes a demand that it give up its weapons, leaving it for a later date. This is a dynamic in itself, said one of the sources briefed on the talks, as both sides need more results that could help drive future talks.
Senior US officials and Palestinian officials in Gaza said a key development during the talks was the success of mediators in convincing Hamas that continued hostage-taking had become an obligation for it rather than a coercion.
The Palestinian official said Hamas was of the view that retaining the hostages reduced global support for the Palestinians, and without them, Israel would have no credibility to resume fighting.
However, the group received no formal written guarantee, backed by specific enforcement mechanisms, that the release of hostages in the first phase, a partial Israeli withdrawal and a halt to fighting, would lead to progress toward a comprehensive agreement that would end the war, two Hamas officials told Reuters.
Instead, he has accepted verbal assurances from the United States and the mediators — Egypt, Qatar and Turkey — that Trump will honor the agreement and not allow Israel to resume its military campaign after the hostages are freed, said Hamas sources and two other officials briefed on the talks.
A Hamas official said, “As far as we are concerned this agreement ends the war.”
gambling can backfire
Hamas leaders are well aware that their gamble could backfire, the Hamas official said.
Despite an agreement for a phased release of hostages with Israeli withdrawal following a ceasefire in January, Trump announced partway through the process that Hamas must free all of its captives at once or he would cancel the agreement and “let hell loose”.
The agreement broke down weeks later and the ongoing war has resulted in more than 16,000 Palestinian deaths, according to Gaza health officials, and an Israeli embargo on aid, leading the Global Hunger Monitor to determine that there was famine in the enclave.
Israel may be tempted to continue opportunistic attacks on Hamas, especially if the terrorist group or its allies launch attacks such as rocket attacks into Israeli territory, a regional diplomat said.
However, a Hamas official said that compared to previous ceasefires, things felt different this time. The group felt the Israelis were approaching an agreement seriously and were benefiting from pressure from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the Americans, the official said.
Trump’s expected visit to the Middle East from Sunday for a victory tour will help ensure that tough details still remain to be agreed, with a source briefed on the talks calling the invitation of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “a very smart move”.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.
