President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has admitted that he may have been “duped” by Hamas in peace negotiations.
Steve Witkoff made the admission during an interview with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday. Just moments after he referenced negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine and said he takes Russia’s Vladimir Putin “at his word,” Witkoff explained that he thought a peace deal between the Islamist militant movement and Israel had been close at one point.
“I certainly hope we get everybody back to the table and get the hostages home. I was in Doha, I met with many of the Arab leaders at the Arab summit; I thought we had a deal, an acceptable deal,” he said, recalling talks in Doha, Qatar, last Sunday.
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The summit lasted seven hours and involved officials from a host of nations in the region. In the end, the terror group that governs the Gaza Strip opted against accepting the tabled extension to the ongoing ceasefire.
“I even thought we had an approval from Hamas. Maybe that is just me getting duped,” Witkoff admitted. “But I thought we were there. And evidently we weren’t. This is on Hamas. The United States stands with the state of Israel. That’s a 100 percent commitment. We have expressed that.”
Touching on the terms of the deal, Witkoff said that Hamas would be demilitarized. Witkoff previously described demilitarization as a “red line for the Israelis.”
“Hamas had every opportunity to demilitarize, to accept the bridging proposal that would have given us a 40 or 50-day ceasefire where we could have discussed demilitarization and a final truce. There were all kind of opportunities to do that and they elected not to. This becomes the alternative. And it is unfortunate,” he said.
Witkoff added that the U.S. is open to future dialogue with Hamas.
“Do I think, would we be amenable to a reach-out from Hamas? Of course we would be. No different than in the Russian conflict, we want to end the killing. But we need to be clear who the aggressor is here and that is Hamas,” he said.
Over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, around 1 in 46 people of the pre-war population of 2.3 million, during Israel’s bombardment of the region, according to the most recent figures released by the Hamas-run health ministry. The Gaza media office adds that some 11,000 people are missing and presumed dead.
It comes after Israel abandoned the ceasefire on Tuesday and resumed a campaign of bombing on Gaza. Israel’s initial invasion of the territory came in response to the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border incursion by Hamas in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage.
Witkoff, meanwhile, stated that he trusts that Putin won’t invade other European countries beyond Ukraine.
“I just don’t see that he wants to take all of Europe,” he said. "This is a much different situation than it was in World War II. In World War II, there was no NATO. You have countries that are armed there. To me, it just—I take him at his word in this sense."
