Prompted by the admission by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that, as part of the Gaza peace negotiations, they had met face-to-face with the Hamas chief Khalil al Hayya, Gershon Baskin, in an Oct. 21 Times of Israel blog, “We Need More of Trump’s Unprecedented Diplomacy,” praised the willingness of U.S. President Donald Trump to circumvent roadblocks. He wrote: “For President Trump there are no diplomatic red lines if crossing them helps to reach a deal.”
Baskin provided two examples. First, no later than September, “Witkoff had arrived to the decision to make personal contact before the Doha attack. We were working on organizing a meeting between Witkoff and the Hamas negotiators in Istanbul to agree to the 8-point document that was worked out by Ghazi Hamad and myself with the direct input of Witkoff in the end of the first week of September. Witkoff proposed that the Hamas leadership come to Istanbul to meet with him and to sign the eight-point document. Witkoff had received the greenlight from the President to meet directly with the Hamas negotiating team.” Their negotiating team was in Doha, where they were deliberating over the document. But “on Sept. 9, Israel attacked the Hamas leadership in Doha.”
Of note, according to Al Jazeera: “Trump’s anger with Netanyahu reportedly peaked after Israel’s strike on Hamas negotiators in Doha in September, exclaiming: ‘He’s screwing me!'”
Baskin’s second example involved Trump getting the delegates from Qatar, Egypt, Türkiye, Hamas, and Israel into the same room on Oct. 9 to sign his “Implementation Steps for President Trump’s Proposal for a Comprehensive End of the Gaza War.” He explained: “What was unprecedented is that the four member Hamas negotiating team sat in the same room across from the Israeli negotiating team. This has never happened before. In my 18 years of contacts with Hamas. I proposed many times to the Israeli officials that I dealt with to speak to Hamas directly, instead of going through me or through the Egyptians or others. No one ever agreed….”
Otherwise, today’s contribution by Baskin also included specific suggestions—for example, that Rafah must be open to crossing in both directions, and that Israel should not be allowed to determine what goes in and out.
Baskin also said that if Israel will not allow a UN Blue Helmet stabilization force, the UN could mandate a multi-national force similar to that established in 1981 to oversee the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. In either case, a direct U.S. role will be critical, he said.
