Trusting Trump: Why Hamas gambled on giving up Gaza hostages

By Nidal al-Mughrabi, Steve Holland and Andrew Mills

CAIRO/WASHINGTON/DUBAI (Reuters) -Hamas has called Donald Trump a racist, a "recipe for chaos" and a man with an absurd vision for Gaza.

But one extraordinary phone call last month helped persuade Hamas that the U.S. president might be able to hold Israel to a peace deal even if the group surrendered all the hostages that give it leverage in the war in Gaza, two Palestinian officials said.

In the call, widely publicised at the time, Trump put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone after a meeting at the White House in September, to apologise to Qatar's prime minister for an Israeli strike on a residential complex that housed Hamas' political leaders in the emirate's capital Doha.

Trump's handling of the Qatar bombing, which failed to kill the Hamas officials it targeted, including lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, gave the group more faith that he was able to stand up to Netanyahu and that he was serious about ending the war in Gaza, the two officials said.

Now, after signing up to a Trump-brokered ceasefire on Wednesday, the militant group has put further faith in the word of a man who only this year proposed expelling Palestinians from Gaza and rebuilding it as a U.S.-controlled beach resort.

Under the deal, which took effect on Friday, Hamas agreed to give up its hostages without an agreement on full Israeli withdrawal. Two other Palestinian officials, from Hamas, acknowledged that was a risky gamble which relies on the U.S. president being so invested in the deal he will not let it fail.

Hamas leaders are well aware their gamble could backfire, one of the Hamas officials said. They fear that once the hostages are released, Israel could resume its military campaign, as happened after a January ceasefire that Trump's team had also been closely involved in.

However, gathered for indirect talks with Israel in a conference centre in the Sharm el-Sheikh Red Sea resort, Hamas was reassured enough by the presence of Trump's closest confidants and regional heavy-weights to sign up to the ceasefire even though it leaves many of the group's core demands unresolved, including moves towards a Palestinian state

Trump's eagerness was felt "heavily" in the conference centre, one of the Hamas officials told Reuters. Trump personally called three times during the marathon session, a senior U.S. official said, with his son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff shuttling between Israeli and Qatari negotiators

NO CERTAINTY FOR LATER PHASES

While it may pave the way to ending the war, which began with Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, there is no certainty that later phases envisaged in Trump's 20-point Gaza plan will materialize.

But Trump's handling of both the Qatar strikes and the ceasefire that ended Israel's 12-day war with Iran in June gave the Hamas negotiators confidence that the U.S. president would not just let Israel resume fighting as soon as the hostages are released, the two Palestinian officials and another source briefed on talks said.

They were among five Palestinian officials including three from Hamas, as well as two senior U.S. officials and five other sources briefed on the talks who spoke to Reuters for this story.

Trump’s aides saw an opportunity to turn his anger at Netanyahu over the Qatar strike into pressure on the Israeli leader to accept a framework for ending the Gaza war, according to a source in Washington familiar with the matter.

Trump, who has cultivated ties with Gulf states important to a range of his wider diplomatic and economic policies, considers the Qatari emir a friend and did not like to see images of the strikes on television, a senior White House official said, calling the a significant turning point that coalesced the Arab world.

Trump's public promise that no such Israeli attacks against Qatar would happen again lent him credibility in the eyes of Hamas and other regional actors, said a Palestinian official in Gaza briefed on the talks and mediation efforts.

"The fact that he gave Qatar a security guarantee that Israel would not attack them again, has increased Hamas's confidence that a ceasefire will remain in place," said Jonathan Reinhold of the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

Hamas also took note of Trump's public order for Iran and Israel to halt hostilities, said the Palestinian official in Gaza, singling-out Trump's demand on his Truth Social platform that Israeli planes "turn around and head home" from a planned bombing raid on Iran hours after he had announced a ceasefire in their 12-day war in June.

"Though theatrical, he does what he says," the official said, saying it showed Trump was willing to make Israel abide by a ceasefire.

TALKS WERE STUCK ON TUESDAY

Trump announced his overall plan on September 29, during Netanyahu's White House visit, and Hamas gave its conditional agreement four days later, which the U.S. president took as a green light.

As recently as Tuesday, talks on how to implement the plan looked stuck around issues including how quickly and how far Israeli troops would withdraw in Gaza to allow Hamas to gather and release the hostages, an official familiar with the talks told Reuters. Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey were unable to get things moving, the source said.

To break the deadlock, Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on Tuesday decided he had to travel to Sharm el-Sheikh, the source said, while Witkoff and Kushner flew in on Wednesday morning, and the talks kicked off around noon.

The presence of NATO power Turkey's intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was also important because of Ankara's strong ties to Hamas and President Tayyip Erdogan's recent meeting with Trump, after which he said Trump had requested he help convince Hamas to accept the plan.

For two years Hamas has insisted it will only release the hostages in return for a full Israeli withdrawal and final end of the conflict. Israel has said it will only stop fighting when all hostages are returned and Hamas is destroyed.

Neither has totally got its way. Israel will remain in around half of Gaza for the foreseeable future, while Hamas survives as an organisation and a demand in Trump's plan that it give up its weapons has been left for a later date. That dynamic in itself, with both sides needing further results, may help drive forward future talks, one of the sources briefed on the talks said.

An important development during the talks was the mediators' success in convincing Hamas that its continued holding of hostages had become a liability for it rather than leverage, the senior U.S. official and the Palestinian official in Gaza said.

Hamas came to a view that continuing to hold hostages undermined global support for Palestinians, and that without them, Israel would have no credibility to restart fighting, the Palestinian official said.

However, the group received no formal written guarantees backed by specific enforcement mechanisms that the first phase involving the hostage release, a partial Israeli pull-back and a halt to fighting, will progress to an envisaged wider deal that ends the war, two of the Hamas officials told Reuters.

Instead, it has accepted verbal assurances from the United States and mediators - Egypt, Qatar and Turkey - that Trump will see the deal through and not allow Israel to resume its military campaign once the hostages are freed, the Hamas sources and two other officials briefed on talks said.

"As far as we are concerned this agreement ends the war," one of the Hamas official said.

THE GAMBLE COULD BACKFIRE

Hamas leaders are well aware their gamble could backfire, the Hamas official said.

Despite an agreement then for a phased hostage release to accompany Israeli withdrawals after the January ceasefire, Trump announced part way through the process that Hamas should free all its captives in one go or he would cancel the deal and "let hell break out".

The deal broke down weeks later and the continued war resulted in more than 16,000 more Palestinian deaths according to Gaza health authorities, and an Israeli embargo on aid that led to the global hunger watchdog determining there was famine in the enclave.

Israel might be tempted to keep opportunistically striking Hamas, one regional diplomat said, especially if the militant group or its allies launch attacks such as rocket fire into Israeli territory.

However, things felt different this time compared to the earlier ceasefire, one of the Hamas officials said. The group felt the Israelis were coming with seriousness to reach a deal and that pressure by Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the Americans on both sides was paying off, the official said.

Trump's expected visit to the Middle East from Sunday for a victory lap will further help ensure it sticks, even with tough details still to be agreed, a source briefed on the talks said, describing the invitation from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as "a very smart move".

(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Steve Holland and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Andrew Mills in Dubai, Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem, Alex Cornwell in Tel Aviv and Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)