Reading tea leaves: Is the US signalling potential differences with Israel?

 

By James M. Dorsey

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A stickler for language, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu twice this month remained conspicuously silent when senior Trump administration officials chose words that signalled potential changes in US policy towards Gaza, the Palestinians, and Hamas.

Mr. Netanyahu may not want to awaken sleeping dogs by reading publicly too much into recent statements by Steve Witkoff, President Donald J. Trump’s Middle East envoy, and Adam Boehler, the president’s hostage negotiator.

With some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, killed in the October 7 attack, that’s a no-go as far as Mr. Netanyahu is concerned. He insists there is nothing to talk about except for the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas, which, in his mind, can only be achieved militarily.

Mr. Netanyahu’s assertions are not borne out by 17 months of war, even if Israel has substantially weakened Hamas at significant cost to Gaza’s population.

The majority of the 251 people Hamas and other Palestinians kidnapped in the attack have been released in negotiated prisoner exchanges with Israel rather than as a result of Israeli military action.

Similarly, Hamas demonstrated in recent days that Israel’s devastation of Gaza has not deprived the group of its ability to fire rockets at Israeli cities.

Moreover, Hamas will likely wage a guerrilla war against Israel if Israel reoccupies Gaza and takes responsibility for administering the Strip.

A careful reading of Mr. Witkoff’s 90-minute interview with Tucker Carlson, an influential far-right podcaster who has platformed Holocaust deniers and critics of Israel, suggests Israel and the United States could find themselves on opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Like Mr. Boehler, Mr. Witkoff argued that he needs to understand all parties in order to do his job.

“I’ve never really been in the same room as (Hamas), which is a little bit weird, wouldn’t you say? Like a negotiation where you don’t have the other party. You don’t even know if the guy behind the wall is the Wizard of Oz,” Mr. Witkoff said.

In contrast to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Witkoff concluded after more than two months of indirect negotiations with Hamas that the group was not “ideologically intractable.” He seemed to imply that he may be able to do business with the group.

Based on US intelligence reports and “the rhythm and the cadence of the negotiation,” Mr. Witkoff concluded that Hamas leaders were not hellbent on death and destruction.

“Once you understand that (Hamas) wanted to live, then you were able to talk to them in a more effective way. That’s when I came to the conclusion that they wanted alternatives,” Mr. Witkoff said.

The envoy added, “I don’t think anyone has a feeling that you can just kill off Hamas. It’s an idea… (but) we just can’t have an October 7 ever again. October 7 was like 9/11 in the United States.”

Earlier, Mr. Boehler said after he met with Hamas that he was trying “to identify with the human elements of those people and then build from there.” He argued that the “most productive” approach is “to realize that every piece of a person is a human.”

Mr. Witkoff signed off on Mr. Boehler’s meetings with Hamas.

Even so, Mr. Netanyahu was careful not to publicly criticise Messrs. Trump and Witkoff for allowing Mr. Boehler to meet with Hamas. Tellingly, Mr. Trump reportedly removed Mr. Boehler from the hostage negotiations with Hamas, but did not fire him.

Mr. Boehler’s removal is unlikely to reassure Mr. Netanyahu, who views Hamas as terrorists, murderers, and rapists who need to be hunted down and killed.

Hamas this weekend acknowledged that Israel had killed a member of its Political Bureau, Salah al-Bardaweel, in an air strike in the Gazan city of Khan Younis.

Earlier this week, Israel said it had killed two senior Hamas security operatives, Rashid Jahjouh and Amin Eslaiah.

Israel has killed numerous Hamas officials since the Gaza war erupted, including its leader, Yahya Sinwar, its military commander, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, its chief negotiator and head of the Political Bureau.

Mr. Witkoff made clear in the interview that he rejected Hamas’ return to rule Gaza, even if he had a more layered understanding of the group.

“What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit. Be involved politically. But they can’t be involved militarily. We can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel,” Mr. Witkoff said, seemingly parting ways with Mr. Netanyahu.

Determined to defend Qatar against assertions that it was in bed with Hamas, Mr. Witkoff seemed to advise Mr. Netanyahu to drop his long-standing attempts to undermine the Gulf state’s role as a mediator.

Mr. Witkoff said he could avoid engaging with Hamas directly because he trusted Qatar as his go-between.

“If I didn’t trust the Qataris, then that would be really problematic, not meeting with Hamas,” Mr. Witkoff said.

Mr. Netanyahu and his surrogates have, in recent weeks, stepped up their targeting of Qatar despite the prime minister’s convoluted relationship with the Gulf state.

The prime minister’s campaign is as much an effort to undermine the Gulf state’s status as a Gaza mediator as it is to prevent Mr. Netanyahu from being held accountable for his years-long soliciting of Qatari funding for Hamas to keep the Palestinian polity divided between the Gaza-based group and the West Bank-based, internationally recognised Palestine Authority.

Responding to Mr. Witkoff’s interview, Doha-based Hamas official Hussam Badran insisted that the group would not disarm “as long as the occupation exists,” a reference to Israel’s presence in Gaza and the West Bank.

At the same time, Hamas officials have repeatedly said that the group did not need to be part of Gaza’s post-war administration.

Mr. Witkoff suggested that the resumption of Israel’s assault on Gaza in violation of the ceasefire agreement he negotiated in January was a way of pressuring Hamas to make further concessions.

“The Israelis going in (to Gaza) is in some respects unfortunate, and in some respects falls into the ‘had to be’ bucket… We may be able to use this to get Hamas to be a whole lot more reasonable.”

Mr. Netanyahu is likely to take heart from the fact that Mr. Witkoff’s greater understanding of Hamas did not persuade the envoy that a Palestinian state alongside Israel was the only way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On the contrary, Mr. Witkoff dismissed the notion of a two-state solution as “just a word.”

He went on to say that “what two-state to me means is how do we have a better living prescription for Palestinians who are living in Gaza?”

“It’s not just about housing. Maybe it’s about AI coming there. Maybe it’s about hyper-scale data centres being seeded into that area… Maybe it’s about blockchain and robotics coming there. Maybe it’s about pharmaceutical manufacturing coming there. We can’t rebuild Gaza, and it be based on a welfare system. We have to give people economic and financial prospects,” Mr. Witkoff said.

Mr. Witkoff seemed to skirt Mr. Trump’s proposal to resettle Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians elsewhere and turn the Strip into a high-end beachfront real estate development.

“What we’re going to do with Gaza is going to become much more apparent over the next six to 12 months,” Mr. Witkoff said.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and podcast, The Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.