US-Hamas talks show that peace is possible

President Trump will visit the Middle East this week, having failed to deliver on his pledge to end Israel’s annihilation of Gaza, which has resumed after a brief ceasefire that he helped secure. Yet he is not without opportunity. Events ahead of his departure underscore that Trump could achieve negotiated outcomes in the Middle East should he break from convention and use US leverage to promote diplomacy, rather than undermine it.

Ahead of Trump’s four-day jaunt to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the US and Hamas brokered a deal to free Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli IDF soldier held in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. Alexander was handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza earlier today. It is unclear if Trump offered any concessions or if Hamas is undertaking a goodwill gesture in the hopes that he will reciprocate. In a statement, Hamas said that Alexander “will be released as part of the steps taken towards a ceasefire, reopen the crossings, and deliver aid and relief to our people in the Gaza Strip.” Israel has imposed a starvation siege on Gaza since March 2.

To secure Alexander’s freedom, Trump had to defy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shattered the previous ceasefire agreement and resumed his assault on Gaza in March. Israel’s ongoing killing spree came after the US and Hamas came close to a side deal to free Alexander that same month, when Netanyahu also intervened to stop them.

According to an account in the New York Times, US hostage envoy Adam Boehler held a series of productive meetings with Hamas representatives two months ago in Doha. On top of seeking an end to Israel’s Gaza rampage, Hamas relayed that it was “open to a five- to 10-year truce, in which the group would lay down its weapons.” In the immediate term, Hamas was willing to free Alexander in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners. But when Israel got word of their progress, Boehler “received an angry phone call” from Netanyahu aide Ron Dermer. This was followed by a leak to the media, which US officials “believed was orchestrated by Israeli officials to sabotage the talks.”

Trump shut down Boehler’s engagement with Hamas after Israeli officials and their Washington allies complained. In addition to directly engaging with Hamas, Boehler had committed the cardinal sin of declaring that “we’re not an agent of Israel” – a taboo statement in Washington, where being an agent of Israel is a de facto prerequisite for state power.

Israel’s hostility to a negotiated solution that would free the remaining captives is now impossible to conceal. “We want to bring the hostages home, but Israel is not willing to end the war,” Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly told Israeli captive families, according to Israel’s Channel 12. “Israel is prolonging it despite the fact that we don’t see where else we can go and that an agreement must be reached.”

Witkoff’s observation, while accurate, is incomplete. Both Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, are aware that Israel has resisted a deal to free the remaining captives because that would take away its pretext to continue destroying and ethnically cleansing Gaza. Therefore, if Trump and Witkoff are serious about an agreement, he would have to stop bowing to Israeli dictates.

Trump has shown mixed signals on that front. Some in the Trump camp voice disdain for Netanyahu, whose close ties to Trump’s first national security adviser, Mike Waltz, reportedly led to Waltz’s dismissal earlier this month. “In MAGA, we are not Bibi fans,” a Trump adviser tells the Washington Post. “Trump is adamant: He wants people to put the guns down.” Yet Trump has taken no concrete steps to force Israel into doing that. As US officials explained to the Wall Street Journal, “Trump has effectively given Israel the green light to advance throughout the whole of Gaza until Hamas changes course and lays down its arms.”

In other words, Trump so far has continued the Biden policy of providing unrelenting cover for mass murder. As former Israeli ambassador Michael Herzog recently recalled, “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year, and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”

With the exception of his decision to engage directly with Hamas, Trump has been no different. When it comes to Israel’s complete blockade of Gaza, Trump has in fact surpassed his predecessor’s cruelty. Whereas Biden occasionally pressured Israel to allow in token amounts of aid, Trump has sat back for more than two months as Israel has cut off all food supplies. According to a new report from a global monitor, Israel has forced the “entire population” of Gaza into “high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation.”

Witkoff has been logging additional miles holding talks with Iran, which wants the US to lift crippling sanctions in exchange for limitations on its nuclear program. True to form, Netanyahu and allied neoconservatives have pressured Trump to demand conditions that would yield either an Iranian surrender or US-led military strikes. After abandoning the previous Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Trump has sent mixed messages on the current sticking point of uranium enrichment, which Tehran insists is a “non-negotiable” right. JD Vance has suggested that the US could agree so long as it is not “the kind of enrichment program that allows you to get to a nuclear weapon… that’s where we draw the line.” Yet Secretary of State Marco Rubio has claimed that if Iran wants to run a civilian nuclear energy program, it would have to “import enriched material” from other countries.

If one is looking for any signs that a new Iran deal can be reached, US officials are claiming that Netanyahu is upset with Trump’s recent maneuvering. Trump just agreed to a truce with Yemen’s Iran-allied Ansar Allah, which the US had been bombing for weeks on Israel’s behalf. Ansar Allah, known widely as “the Houthis”, has agreed to stop disrupting shipping vessels in protest of Israel’s Gaza siege, yet Trump did not compel them to cease attacks on Israel. Trump’s chief intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, has also reaffirmed the longstanding US intelligence consensus that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, which it formally barred in 2003.

If Trump can break from his own record and reach a deal with Iran, that would be a major step forward. But ultimately, no US president will be able to usher in Middle East peace until the fundamental flashpoint is addressed: Israel’s decades-old suppression of Palestinian self-determination.

In a recent interview, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant acknowledged that Hamas, in launching the Oct. 7^th attack on Israel, was trying to end one of the world’s longest-running military occupations. “[Hamas] were speaking about Israel withdrawing from [the West Bank]… about how to divide Jerusalem… in return for a [hostage] deal,” Gallant said.

In other words, Hamas was seeking the internationally accepted solution in which Palestinians obtain a state in just 22% of their stolen homeland. Until a US president is willing to join Palestinian leaders in that historic compromise, any talk of Middle East peace will remain a smokescreen for perpetual US-backed Israeli aggression.