Adam Boehler told Israel Public Broadcasting the U.S.-Hamas has a baby step progress as Hamas offered the truce during direct talks U.S. paid its efforts to free remaining American and Israeli hostages.
Hamas offering 5-to-10-year truce with Israel
Hamas offered to hand over governance of the Gaza Strip in exchange for a five-to-10-year truce in its war with Israel, President Trump’s special envoy for hostage negotiations said on Sunday.
The president wants every single hostage home, and he wants a peace, a calm in this region, that’s what he wants,” Boehler said.
The U.S.-Hamas talks broke with past U.S. policy and were outside the terms of a deal authored by former President Biden that went into effect on Jan. 19.
Under the terms of that deal, the release of additional hostages was supposed to happen alongside so-called Phase 2 talks to end the war.
Trump in early February proposed the U.S. taking over the Gaza Strip and turning it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East. Trump called for the permanent relocation of the nearly 2 million Palestinians during the reconstruction effort, with no guarantee they could return.
Arab countries proposed an alternative plan, but Trump shut them down, in part over provisions that kept Palestinians in Gaza.
