US threatens other ‘options’ to free Hamas hostages

Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, has recalled the US negotiating team from the Doha talks, saying Hamas showed a ‘lack of desire to reach a ceasefire’.

Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff, right, and Donald Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner in New Jersey. Picture: AP

Middle East peace envoy Steve Witkoff said he was recalling the US negotiating team from Doha, Qatar, for consultations, saying Hamas showed a “lack of desire to reach a ceasefire in Gaza”, in the latest roadblock to the Trump administration’s drive to end the war between Israel and Hamas.

“While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be co-ordinated or acting in good faith,” Mr Witkoff said in a post on X. “We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.”

He did not clarify what the alternatives were.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s office said it was also returning its negotiating team for further consultations in Israel.

The setback casts an uncertain future on the Trump administration-led efforts to end the war between Hamas and Israel, which has triggered other conflicts between Israel and Iran-backed proxy groups and fuelled a major humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Mr Witkoff’s announcement leaves the talks in limbo, although not completely collapsed. Among the compromises that Hamas made, according to mediators familiar with the matter, is taking a demand for a long-term ceasefire off the table. It is now content with the US guaranteeing to extend the 60-day truce for another 60 days when it expires to allow for more discussions on the political and security arrangements in Gaza after the war.

Part of the negotiations centred on a proposal by Hamas to release 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 other hostages in exchange for Israel freeing Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas also said it was open to laying down arms and storing them under international supervision when a long-term ceasefire is in effect, according to the mediators familiar with the matter.

Egypt and the US and other regional players are also discussing the departure of a number of Hamas figures from Gaza and where they can take refuge. Egypt asked Israel for additional guarantees in order to push for that discussion with Hamas.

One unresolved issue in the latest round of negotiations is how wide of a buffer zone Israel would maintain in the so-called Philadelphia corridor, a strip of land between Gaza’s border and Egypt. Another has centred on how food was distributed amid mounting warnings by aid groups of famine in Gaza.

Twenty-eight countries, including European nations, Canada and Japan, issued a joint statement this week rebuking Israel and saying its “aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity”.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the statement was “disconnected from reality and sends the wrong message to Hamas”.

Israel has refused to allow the United Nations to distribute food in Gaza because it alleges that the UN organisation in Gaza, UNRWA, has ties to Hamas, and said some of its members participated in the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Hamas has insisted that it wants the UN and Red Crescent to oversee food aid distribution, and to cut the relatively new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – a joint US and Israeli venture – out of distributing food.

There has been a surge of violence as throngs of people rushed GHF-led distribution program sites in a bid to get aid. The UN said that as of mid-July 674 people had been killed in Gaza seeking food in the vicinity of GHF sites and over 200 killed seeking food on aid convoy routes, while thousands more were injured.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said the GHF has “removed the power and the influence of Hamas financially and with using aid and food as a weapon itself to control people”.

About 93 per cent of Gaza’s population – some 1.95 million people – are experiencing a “critical risk of famine”, according to the humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps.

The Wall Street Journal