Trump's Hamas outreach
Yesterday,
Barak Ravid of
Axios broke the story that Pres. Trump's "Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs" (SPEHA)
Adam Boehler
had held several, apparently face-to-face, meetings in Qatar with Hamas
leaders over recent weeks. They discussed some kind of a deal that
would involve, in the first instance, the release of the five
American-Israeli dual-citizen hostages still held by Hamas, or their
remains, in response for some (as yet undefined)
quid pro quo for Hamas... According to
Axios,
these talks may also have gone further in terms of reviving some
version of the broader ceasefire-for-hostages deal for Gaza that has
been completely on hold since last Sunday.
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esterday evening, too, Trump posted a belligerent, quite possibly ass-covering,
message on his "Truth Social" platform. In all-caps he warned: "RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER!"
What to make of all this?
First, some background.
Of the 59 captives still thought to be held by Hamas and other
resistance elements in Gaza-- of whom under half are thought to be still
alive-- the five who are also U.S. citizens consist of three men who
were serving in the Israeli military when taken, and two senior
citizens. Only one-- a serving soldier-- is thought to be still alive.
Trump's envoy Adam Boehler is an interesting guy-- someone with a much
deeper and broader track-record in undertaking international missions
for Trump than the "Special Presidential Envoy for the Middle East",
Steve Witkoff. Sccording to Wikipedia.
Boehler
is a former classmate of Jared Kushner. During the first Trump term, he
undertook many international missions, including some of the preps for
the "Abraham Accords" and some of Trump's key negotiations with Afghan
leaders. Those latter talks were conducted in Qatar
According to
Ravid's
Axios account, and others that quickly followed it on several Israeli media platforms including
Haaretz, the
Times of Israel,
etc, Boehler (and sometimes Witkoff) had been conducting their contacts
with Hamas for a number of weeks-- that is, during the 42-day period in
which Phase One of the previously agreed three-phase ceasefire
agreement was being implemented.
Phase One came to an end last Sunday. In the days prior to that, Witkoff
and the Israelis had proposed that, since the planned negotiations over
the details of Phase Two had gotten nowhere, the terms of Phase One
should simply be continued. And/or, a completely new arrangement could
be implemented to replace the long-ago agreed Phases Two and Three of
the agreement.
For its part, the Hamas leadership had argued that both those US-Israeli
proposals violated the spirit and the terms of the three-phase
agreement to which they had agreed as long ago as last May, and which
the Israelis finally agreed to-- under the intense urging of Steve
Witkoff-- only on January 15. The Hamas leaders therefore rejected any
attempts to breach the agreed-upon three-phase agreement. (They also
pointed out that Israel's implementation of Phase One had been extremely
poor, falling far short of allowing into Gaza the agreed-upon numbers
of desperately needed tents, mobile shelters, and other aid items, and
far short of ceasing fire completely throughout Gaza, too.)
Last Sunday, Israel abruptly-- and without encountering any U.S. protest-- halted the entry into Gaza of all humanitarian aid.
Other relevant developments over the past ten days also included:
- The successful conclusion last Thursday of the last portion of the
reciprocal captive-release steps specified for Phase One of the
agreement. Under Phase One, 55 or so Israeli captives have been released
from Gaza, while several hundred of the 10,000 or so Palestinian
captives held by Israel-- comprising many who had never been charged or
tried for any crime, and some who had served fairly long prison
sentences--were also released.
- Trump's release last week of the truly obscene AI-generated video
of what a "Trump Gaza" development might look like, in the context of
his previously stated plan to transfer all of Gaza's population out of
the Strip completely while he, Jared Kushner, and others would implement
his plan to "own Gaza completely."
- Egypt's hasty though actually successful convening of a
conference of Arab leaders to design (and finance) an alternative plan
for rebuilding Gaza while its residents still remained within it. On Tuesday, the Arab League as a whole formally adopted that $53 billion plan.
... So now we know that while all that was going on, Adam Boehler was
also conducting his talks with Hamas in Qatar. It seems that Israel's
once-famed Mossad secret service didn't get wind of Boehler's mission
until very recently. The
Axios, reporter Barak Ravid has a long
history
of work with Israel's security services. It is quite possible that
after Mossad did learn of (or were told about) the Qatar talks, they
"leaked" the news to Ravid, since when he publishes news reports in
US-based
Axios he is not subject to the dauntingly tight
censorship the Israelis impose on the reporting of security affairs out
of their country. But once he had reported it in
Axios, Israeli
news outlets then became more free, citing his reports, to build on
them and add some more details of their own details about the
Boehler-Hamas talks.
For my part, I'm fascinated by the degree to which Trump and his team
are prepared, when they see fit, to refuse the "always kow-tow to
Israel" stance that Pres. Biden had always, boot-lickingly stuck to. We
saw Trump's willingness to break with that earlier, when Witkoff, nine
days prior to Trump's inauguration,
forced Netanyahu to meet with him on a Saturday and to finally sign onto the ready-since-last-May three phase agreement.
So Trump's willingness to talk with Hamas behind the backs of the
Israelis is a further indication of his willingness to buck the Israeli
diktat.
But then yesterday, Israel's fanatically pro-settler finance minister
Bezalel Smotrich was
given a warm welcome in Trump's Treasury Department by his U.S. counterpart, amid some
speculation
in the Israeli media that Trump might soon announce his support for an
Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Smotrich has frequently threatened
that if the Gaza ceasefire deal proceeds, he is quite prepared to
top[ple Netanyahu's government
Agreeing to grant Smotrich an official visit to Washington was another
significant-- and much more disturbing-- departure from Pres. Biden's
policies.
Trump, as we know, loves to keep everyone around him off-balance,
and to keep himself firmly at the center of attention as the only force
who can resolve all the contradictory messages that he's very happy to
sow all around him. So it seems hard to determine, as of now, whether
the talks with Hamas will lead to anything constructive, or whether
Trump will instead be quite happy to give the Israelis a bright green
light to use all the military and intel help that he's given them, to
resume its genocidal attack on all of Gaza with even more force than
before.
However, there seems to me a real possibility that the contacts with
Hamas may prove constructive. One indicator, from on-the-ground in Gaza,
is that despite Sunday's abrupt cut-off of aid trucks, the broader
ceasefire seems still to have held more or less as previously-- that is,
with strong discipline in holding fire from the resistance side, and
only sporadic violations from the Israeli side.
Another indicator is the statement the Hamas Political Bureau released yesterday evening (PDF
here) in which they noted that:
There is a shift in US political discourse compared to
previous administrations, with a tendency to find a comprehensive deal
in the region. The Arab stance and popular pressure could lead to a
change in the American president's plan for displacement.
The statement also laid out the following negotiating positions:
We agreed in Cairo meetings to the Egyptian proposal to form
a temporary support committee until a consensus [Palestinian]
government is formed and elections are held.
There will be no extension of the first phase, and we are committed to
the ceasefire agreement while waiting for the start of the second phase
negotiations.
We see no benefit in the presence of non-Palestinian forces in Gaza...
It strikes me that the ferocity of Israel's genocide over the past 17
months, and then the cruel audacity of Trump's recent "Mar-a-Gaza"
proposals have-- along with the resilience, pluck, and skill of the
multi-dimensional resistance that the people of Gaza have sustained for
the past 17 months-- finally persuaded Arab governments that for many
decades have been complacently in the pro-Washington (and therefore, by
clear implication, also the pro-Israel) camp that
they finally need to take some form of action to resist the US-Israeli designs on what remains of Palestine. Even if they do this only to save their own, very tired nd very repressive regimes...
So maybe, just maybe, the Trump team's overtures to Hamas, and the
cautiously positive response of the Hamas leaders may lead to something
positive.
This does carry some echoes of the brief diplomatic achievement that
Secretary of States George Shultz won in late 1988, when he made his
first careful opening to to the long-vilified PLO (back in the day.)
That opening was quickly slammed shut... But then, five years later it
was Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin who took the initiative to persuade a new
U.S. administration to work directly with the PLO. This time around, if
there is second-guessing and a retreat by Washington, there is unlikely
to be any pressure from any conceivable Israeli government that would
push proactively for engagement with the Palestinians' current
resistance leaders.
There are other possible pitfalls, too. Might the Trump team have in
mind that by talking to Hamas they could move towards a "Gaza only" form
of (extremely limited) Palestinian "liberation", while giving Smotrich
and his allies the go-ahead for a full-scale annexation of the West
Bank? Who knows?
We are now, certainly, deep into experiencing-- at the global level, as
well as in West Asia-- many different kinds of "interesting times."
Let's hope that with the growing power of the deeply anti-colonialist
Global Majority, better days may lie ahead.
You stay well--
Helena