Times of Israel
The direct talks between the US and Hamas have hit a snag since their existence was leaked to the media on Wednesday, a government official briefed on the talks told The Times of Israel.
The negotiations — unprecedented in nature — have largely been focused on securing the release of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander along with the bodies of American-Israelis Itay Chen, Omer Neutra, Gadi Haggai and Judi Weinstein, the official said.
Israel was not fully briefed on the talks ahead of time, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unhappy with their taking place at all, the official said. The premier’s office issued a terse statement following an Axios report revealing the existence of the first-ever direct talks between the US and Hamas, saying, “Israel has expressed to the United States its position regarding direct talks with Hamas.”
The official denied reports that progress had been made in the negotiations and that they focused on phase two.
US President Donald Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler has been leading the talks with Hamas on behalf of Washington, and they have been taking place in Doha, the official confirmed.
The talks signaled a departure from a decades-long US policy of not negotiating with Hamas, which Washington and many Western countries list as a terrorist organization.
While not the main focus of the talks, the US has also proposed a 60-day ceasefire during which 10 of the Israeli hostages would be released, Sky News Arabic reported on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Hamas representatives charged on Thursday that threats by US President Donald Trump against them were “encouraging” Israel to avoid negotiating the second phase of a ceasefire.
Trump’s comments would “complicate matters regarding the ceasefire agreement,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told CNN, urging the president to pressure Jerusalem into agreeing to a second phase “as stipulated in the agreement.”
“The best track to release the remaining Israeli [hostages] is by [Israel] going into the second phase and compelling it to adhere to the agreement signed under the sponsorship of mediators,” he said.
The comments by Hamas came in response to a new ultimatum issued on Wednesday by Trump, which demanded that the group immediately release all remaining hostages or be destroyed.
“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Release all of the hostages now — not later — and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.
“This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance.”
Trump’s post was uploaded shortly after he met with eight released hostages in the Oval Office, and amid an apparent impasse in negotiations between Israel and Hamas after the first phase of the fragile ceasefire ended Saturday.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Hamas to take Trump’s threats seriously, telling Fox News: “People don’t realize the President meets with these people, he hears their stories; he’s outraged and rightfully so.
“He’s tired of watching these videos every weekend where hostages that are emaciated are released and bodies are turned over, and sometimes it’s the wrong bodies and there’s five here and three there and there’s games that are being played. And he’s lost his patience with it.”
“He doesn’t say these things and not mean it, as folks are finding out around the world. If he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it. And so they’d better take that seriously.”
Trump has issued multiple ultimatums to Hamas over the past several months with limited success. Before his inauguration, he demanded Hamas release all of the hostages or there would be “all hell to pay.” The group did not release all of them, but did agree to a multi-phase ceasefire deal with Israel that secured the release of 33 hostages, in multiple batches, during the first stage.
Last month, after Hamas threatened not to release one batch of those hostages as scheduled, citing Israeli violations of the agreement, Trump issued another similar ultimatum demanding that all of them be released at noon the following Saturday. Hamas did not agree to release all of the hostages, but it did free the three it was scheduled to let go.
“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job; not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” Trump warned in his fresh threat on Wednesday.
He noted in his post that he had just met with the former hostages, “whose lives you have destroyed… Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!”
“Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful future awaits, but not if you hold hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER,” Trump added.
‘They will get the job done’
Trump’s ultimatum came after several roller-coaster days for the hostage families.
As phase one of the deal ended on Saturday, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement announcing that it had accepted what it described as a proposal from Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to extend the ceasefire under terms that the sides had agreed to in January.
While Israel signed onto these terms, including a stipulation that the two sides would hold negotiations regarding the terms of phase two, Netanyahu has long insisted that he would not end the war before Hamas’s military and governing capabilities have been dismantled. Accordingly, he largely refused to hold negotiations regarding phase two.
The “Witkoff proposal” he unveiled on Saturday evening envisions the extension of the ceasefire through Ramadan and Passover, which ends on April 19. During this period, the remaining hostages would be released in two batches — one on the first day of the extension and the other at the end, pending agreements on a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas quickly rejected the proposal, insisting it was only prepared to release hostages under the original framework that the sides reached in January. Israel, in turn, has threatened to resume fighting and on Sunday announced that it was blocking all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza moving forward.
While an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel that the proposal was actually “more of an Israeli offer,” the Trump administration quickly got behind it and issued a statement backing Israel’s stance in the hostage negotiations.
Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led fighters on October 7, 2023.
They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas has so far released 30 living hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during the ceasefire that began in January.
The resistence group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.