Washington (Quds News Network)- The US has been negotiating with Hamas this week through an American-Palestinian intermediary in Doha, hoping to broker a Gaza ceasefire agreement, CNN reported on Wednesday.
According to a source familiar with the matter, the talks have been led on the US side by Bishara Bahbah, the American-Palestinian businessman who led the group “Arab Americans for Trump” during the 2024 presidential campaign and who has been working on behalf of the administration.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Hamas approached Bahbah to mediate secret talks with Washington that led to the release of American-Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, who had been held in Gaza.
The backchannel talks that led to the release of Alexander began with a message from a Hamas official to Bahbah, two Israeli officials, one Palestinian official and one U.S. official told Axios.
The Hamas official outside Gaza reached out to Bahbah in late April in hopes of striking up a dialogue with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff. Around 20 messages were passed between the sides in calls and texts to Bahbah over two weeks. Bahbah also spoke to Hamas chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, according to a source familiar.
A new round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas began in Doha on Saturday to reach a ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement to end 19 months of Israeli bombardment on Gaza.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said on Tuesday that Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza are eroding renewed hopes for peace efforts that followed Hamas’s release of Edan Alexander.
“We thought that moment would open a door to end this tragedy, but the response was a more violent wave of strikes,” Sheikh Mohammed said at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. “This irresponsible, aggressive behaviour undermines any potential chance for peace.”
He also provided an update on recent ceasefire negotiations in the Qatari capital, which he said have so far not led anywhere.
“There is a fundamental gap between the two parties,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “One party is looking for a partial deal that might … lead to a comprehensive deal, and the other party is looking just for a one-off deal … and to end the war and to get all the hostages out.”
“We couldn’t bridge this fundamental gap,” he added.
Hamas released Edan Alexander, the last living Israeli-American held, after the direct engagement with the Trump administration. Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, said the group was “awaiting and expecting the US administration to exert further pressure” on Israel “to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid.”
The ceasefire talks come as the Israeli military announced on Sunday that it has launched a large-scale ground invasion across Gaza, supported by intense aerial bombardments that have caused widespread civilian casualties in recent days, as part of its “Operation Gideon’s Chariots.”
According to CNN, Dennis Ross, a former US envoy to the Middle East who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said, “It tells me that they think they have a real negotiation happening. They want their own Hamas channel, not through Qatar or Egypt. That is an indicator that they think they can cut through the issues more effectively and also that they think they can influence Hamas.”
“I am not sure if this is a sign of desperation or confusion,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Maybe they see him [Bahbah] as a window into Hamas thinking, it is certainly plausible.”
Axios reported on Tuesday that US officials say President Donald Trump has been increasingly frustrated by the ongoing Israeli war in Gaza and upset by images of suffering of Palestinian children, and has told his aides to tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he wants him to wrap it up.
The growing frustrations among Trump and his top aides with Israel boil down to a key issue: the president wants the war to end – and soon. Trump, multiple sources familiar with the matter said, has been “annoyed” on several occasions with the pace of talks.
“The president is frustrated about what is happening in Gaza. He wants the war to end, he wants the hostages to come home, he wants aid to go in and he wants to start rebuilding Gaza,” one White House official told Axios.
“The president obviously wants a deal,” a person close to Trump told CNN. “It’s becoming more clear as talks continue that Bibi isn’t quite there.”
However, sources indicated that Trump’s frustrations do not signal a shift in U.S. support for Israel, nor is he privately pressuring Israel to stop its renewed assaults in Gaza.
Moreover, Vice President JD Vance opted not to visit Israel over the weekend, Axios first reported, following his trip to Italy – a decision sources said was driven in part by logistics, and in part because his presence could have been viewed as a dramatic endorsement of the attacks.
Bahbah has been coordinating his efforts with Witkoff, who recently put forward a new proposal to both Israel and Hamas that could serve as the foundation to getting both sides to agree to another ceasefire, Trump administration officials said.
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