What did Trump’s team think they could get from direct negotiations with Hamas — besides angering the Israelis? Whatever it might be, not only has the administration reversed course, but they’re also pulling a Mission: Impossible-level disavowal on those who attempted it.
Axios’ Barak Ravid reported late yesterday that both Marco Rubio and the White House have now distanced themselves from Adam Boehler’s attempt to unilaterally resolve the hostage crisis. Rubio may have been gentler with Boehler than the White House:
Behind the scenes: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined to pick a public fight with Trump since Axios revealed the U.S.-Hamas talks last Wednesday, but Israeli officials have expressed their anger in private, Israeli officials say.
Driving the news: Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Monday while traveling to Saudi Arabia that the Hamas talks were a “one-off” that “hasn’t borne fruit.”
According to the Times of Israel, that’s not all Rubio said. Rubio praised the effort and told reporters that Boehler had gotten both permission and encouragement to see if direct engagement would pay off:
“That was a one-off situation in which our special envoy for hostages, whose job it is to get people released, had an opportunity to talk directly to someone who has control over these people and was given permission and encouraged to do so. He did so,” Rubio told reporters en route to Saudi Arabia.
The White House response didn’t exactly track with Rubio’s explanation, at least according to the Israelis. Benjamin Netantyahu adviser Ron Dermer told the Israeli cabinet that Boehler had been free-lancing and had since been told not to do it again:
Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s closest adviser, said during a security cabinet meeting on Sunday that Boehler’s talks with Hamas didn’t represent the Trump administration’s position, an Israeli official briefed on the meeting said.
- Dermer also told the ministers that Israel received assurances from the Trump administration that “it won”t happen again” and that Witkoff will be the only channel for the negotiations over the hostages.
Has anyone informed Boehler of this? He went on Israeli television to claim that Hamas was willing to disarm and that they had made “not a bad first offer” in his talks:
Adam Boehler, in interviews on Israeli television, said his main goal in the talks was the release of the last American hostage who remains alive in Gaza. But he also told Israeli public broadcaster Kan News that Hamas had offered a five- to 10-year truce under which it would release all hostages in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners, lay down its arms, allow the U.S. and others to ensure the removal of its vast tunnel system, and withdraw from politics.
Boehler called the proposal “not a bad first offer” and suggested a new deal could come together in a matter of weeks.
Come on, man. Hamas makes offers of cease-fires all the time, and never has yet kept to the terms of any of them. Their mission as an Iranian proxy army is to annihilate Israel and either kill or enslave the Jews that might remain. Hamas has made their determination to achieve those objectives abundantly clear over the last two decades, which also includes ten significant cease-fire agreements — all of which Hamas violated to launch wars.
As one Israeli official told the Wall Street Journal, “Whoever thinks Hamas will part from its weapons doesn’t know Hamas, its ideology or its strategy.”
Boehler also appears to have been the first and only negotiator to hear a pledge to disarm. Hamas didn’t offer that to the Israelis even in the talks where it might have mattered:
The U.S. officials also told Hamas that they were primarily seeking to understand if Hamas’s leadership was interested in a wider deal to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while also discussing the transition to the second phase of the Gaza cease-fire agreement, the Arab and Hamas officials said.
During the talks, Hamas officials said they would be willing to consider putting their offensive weapons under external custody and release all hostages, in exchange for a framework to end Israel’s restrictions on trade and travel in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as a truce for up to 10 years with Israel, Arab and Hamas officials said. Hamas officials, however, said the militant group and other Palestinian factions would be against a complete disarmament even under a deal that includes a path to a two-state solution, the officials said.
Perhaps the White House should send Boehler back home for a while for a “briefing.” It appears that Boehler is out of his depth, and worse yet, that he’s undercutting Witkoff and others who grasp the situation more accurately. Hamas uses splits and confusion like this to its advantage every time they arise, and this is a particularly bad time for free-lancing by people who don’t understand the nature of the players involved.
