Special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff admits Hamas “duped” him into believing the terror group was serious about reaching a deal to extend the existing ceasefire with Israel.
By World Israel News and Frontpage Magazine
President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East was “duped” by Hamas as he attempted to negotiate an extension of the six-week Gaza truce and accompanying hostage release that ended earlier this month, he admitted over the weekend.
Speaking with Fox News on Sunday, Steve Witkoff acknowledged that it appeared he had been misled by Hamas to believe that the terror group was sincere in its intentions to negotiate a deal to continue the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release that had held for six weeks, from January 19t to March 2.
With Israel and Hamas unable to reach an agreement on an expanded deal as part of the second phase of the ceasefire, Witkoff proposed that the two sides extend the truce through the Ramadan and Passover holidays under the same framework as before, with Israel releasing 30 jailed Arab terrorists for every hostage released.
Hamas would, under Witkoff’s proposal, free half of the remaining 59 hostages immediately and the second half at the end of the 50-day ceasefire.
However, Hamas refused to accept the plan, culminating in Israel’s resumption of the war last week.
“I thought we had an acceptable deal,” Witkoff said on Sunday. “I even thought we had an approval from Hamas. Maybe that’s just me getting duped. I thought we were there, and evidently, we weren’t.”
Noting that Israel had accepted his “bridging proposal,” Witkoff said Hamas was entirely to blame for the failure to extend the Gaza truce.
“This is on Hamas. The United States stands with the State of Israel. That’s a 100% commitment,” he said.
“We’ve expressed that Hamas had every opportunity to demilitarize, to accept the bridging proposal that would have given us a 40- or 50-day ceasefire where we could have discussed demilitarization and a final truce. There were all kinds of opportunities to do that, and they elected not to.”
The interview came just days after Witkoff spoke in a podcast hosted by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, aired on Friday, during which the president’s Mideast envoy suggested that a demilitarized form of Hamas could have some role in Gaza after the war.
Witkoff was criticzed for being soft on both Qatar, who harbored Hamas terrorists for decades, and Hamas itself.
Witkoff defended Qatar’s role as a fair mediator: “I’ve had a couple of experiences where first I was attacked as being pro-Qatari sympathizer. By the way, Qatar is a mediator here. They’re not a party to the conflict, they’re a mediator. So I am—how could I not collaborate with the mediator? And if I’m not collaborating with the mediator, I’m bound to be ineffective. It’s not even possible that I could do the job. I had to know everything that they knew. So that means collaboration.”
Regarding Hamas, while he emphasized that “we can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel,” Witkoff added that if Hamas were to disarm, “they can stay for a while and even be politically involved” in Gaza.
“What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit. Be involved politically. But they can’t be involved militarily. We can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel,” Witkoff said.
“You know, what we heard in the beginning of this conflict is Hamas is ideological. They’re prepared to die for a whole variety of reasons,” Witkoff told Carlson. “I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in. They’re not ideologically intractable. I don’t. I never believe that.”
The contention that Hamas is not ideological and is willing to make a deal was a feature of both the Bush and Obama administrations.