For most of the past 17 months, the idea of a political settlement to the war in Gaza, much less the Israel-Palestinian conflict, has appeared far from reality – eclipsed by a devastating military campaign that has killed tens of thousands, and black and white rhetoric.
Hamas members are “sick and twisted,” in the words of US President Donald Trump. The only option, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly pledged, is to “eliminate” the militant group – his oft-vaunted “total victory.”
And yet on Wednesday it emerged that the US president may be willing to settle for something far more practical: His government is breaking with its longstanding policy of not talking with groups it deems to be terrorist organizations.
“The special envoy who’s engaged in those negotiations does have the authority to talk to anyone,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters Wednesday. “These are ongoing talks and discussions.”
Beyond Trump’s rhetoric of expelling Palestinians from Gaza and taking over the enclave, it appears as though the US government wants to hear what Hamas might want in exchange for the release of 59 hostages it still holds. Only one American still believed to be alive, Edan Alexander, remains in Gaza. The group also holds four dead Americans.
Previous talks have all been held through the intermediaries of Qatar and Egypt.
Hamas, which grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, was founded in the late 1980s and is dedicated to resisting the Israeli state. It had long advocated for the destruction of Israel, but in 2017 said that it was prepared to accept a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem – inside the borders that existed before Israel captured large swaths of territory from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria.
Under international law, Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem are considered to be militarily occupied by the Israeli state.
A central goal of Israel’s devastating war on Gaza has been to remove Hamas from power and to eliminate its ability to threaten Israel.
On at least that first point, Hamas’ leadership abroad has been increasingly clear that it is willing to step aside.
“We say clearly that it is not necessary for Hamas to be part of the political or administrative arrangements in the next phase,” spokesperson Hazem Qassem told Al Arabiya last month.
When Arab leaders, scrambling to respond to Trump’s Gaza plan, proposed this week an interim coalition government for Gaza which would not include Hamas, the militant group quickly endorsed the plan.
The mundane realities of providing schooling, healthcare, and basic municipal services is incompatible, he said, with resisting Israeli occupation. “Since they won the elections in 2006 and they took over the Gaza Strip in summer 2007, it has become obvious to Hamas that they cannot do both things,” he said.
The fact that so many of Hamas’ political leaders – who have for years live abroad in Qatar and Turkey – were unaware of the plan to attack Israel on October 7 speaks to the relative supremacy of resistance over governance within the movement.
But the central, unresolved issue is whether the group will disarm.
“I am aware that discussions on this matter are ongoing within Hamas’s leadership abroad, and opinions are divided,” Gershon Baskin, a veteran Israeli negotiator-turned-peace activist who has a long history of speaking with Hamas, said recently.
Publicly, the group has been unequivocal. The idea that Hamas would lay down its arms is “a red line and is not up for discussion or negotiation,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesperson, said in a recent interview.
The reality may be a bit more complicated.
“Hamas are not lunatics,” said Hamzé Attar, a Palestinian journalist and defense analyst from Gaza who has lived abroad for more than a decade. “They know that there is a point where weapons mean nothing, and they will be more of an obstacle than a leverage.”
That point, however, will be hard for Netanyahu to stomach: a Palestinian state.
“For them it is inconceivable to ask Hamas to lay down their weapons or their arms before there is a meaningful political settlement to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” Abusada said. “For them, according to international law, any occupied people – like the Ukrainians for example – have the right to defend themselves.”
The group is also very aware, analysts say, that any commitment to a state must be ironclad and backed by international actors such as Saudi Arabia, which has said that normalized diplomatic relations with Israel are conditional on Palestinian statehood.
Even before October 7, the Israeli prime minister paid only the most passing lip service to the two-state solution. Since then, he has steadfastly vowed that a state would be “a reward for terrorism.” He has endorsed Trump’s plan to encourage the emigration of all 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza, and his far-right coalition partners are readying their plans to re-establish Jewish settlements in the enclave.
Trump has proven over and again that he is willing to force longtime American allies into uncomfortable positions if he thinks it will benefit him.
His administration negotiated with the Taliban to withdraw Western forces from Afghanistan, leading to the eventual overthrow of the longtime American-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani.
Israel’s leaders are clearly nervous about what Trump might negotiate with Hamas. When it was revealed that the US was speaking with Hamas, the prime minister’s office released a terse statement that “Israel has expressed to the United States its position regarding direct talks with Hamas” – without saying what that position was.
The question now will be how far Trump is willing to go.
“The US has almost no leverage on Hamas and US threats against Hamas are almost useless,” Baskin said. “The US is not likely to bomb Gaza or to have US boots on the ground.”
The main danger, in his view, is that the US would give a green light to “further Israeli breaches of international law, such as cutting humanitarian supplies.” Israel denies breaching international law in Gaza.
“There is no deal without ending the war and without Israel exiting Gaza. There is no end to the war without all of the hostages being freed. There is no real end to the war if Hamas – militarily or politically – continues to control Gaza.”
Trump may tell Hamas’ leadership that “now is the time to leave Gaza,” but his national security advisers will surely be telling him that America believes that the militant group has recruited more members than it has lost fighting Israel.
A senior member of Hamas’ politburo, Osama Hamdan, said recently that the group has “an opportunity to expand,” and that any outside actor who comes into Gaza to do Israel’s bidding “will be treated like Israel.”
Israel’s new military chief warned this week that the country must prepare for a “prolonged multi-front war of attrition.”
That will not sit well with an American president who casts himself as a peacemaker.
“I understand that we are all still in a state of deep trauma,” Baskin said of his fellow Israelis. “I understand that the majority of Israelis today reject the idea of a Palestinian state. But the reality of more than 7 million Israeli Jews and more than 7 million Palestinian Arabs living on the land between the (Jordan) River and the (Mediterranean) Sea is much stronger and compelling than the current mood of Israeli public opinion.”