Father of American-Israeli hostage urges Boehler’s return to negotiating table
Adi Alexander says closest Edan got to release from captivity was during talks Trump’s hostage envoy held with Hamas, which were abandoned following Israeli and GOP uproar
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The father of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander on Tuesday urged the Trump administration to return its hostage envoy Adam Boehler to the negotiation effort, arguing that the latter’s direct talks with Hamas last month were the closest his son came to being released from captivity in Gaza.
“Why not put Adam Boehler back in the game? The closest Edan got to being released was through Adam’s efforts. That I know for sure,” Adi Alexander said in an interview with The Times of Israel.
Boehler held three unprecedented meetings with Hamas officials in Qatar at the beginning of March, aimed primarily at brokering a smaller deal to return Alexander along with the bodies of four other American-Israeli hostages.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who heads Israel’s negotiating team, only learned about those talks after the fact and leaked them to the press in order to sabotage the effort, a US and an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
“The talks were sabotaged. Adam took a lot of political heat just for doing his job,” Adi Alexander said.
Dermer had fumed at Boehler for offering Hamas the release of 100 of the remaining 300 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences in Israeli prisoners without Jerusalem’s consent. In addition to anger from Jerusalem, Boehler also faced criticism from some senior Republicans in Congress, while other Trump officials avoided standing by him.
After the secret meetings were leaked to the press on March 5, Hamas dragged its feet in responding to the offer, before eventually accepting it on March 14, Boehler confirmed last week.
By then, though, the Trump administration had moved away from the direct channel led by Boehler, returning to the original track led by US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff, who negotiated with Hamas through Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
Boehler said last week that he could resume his direct talks with Hamas, but he has been largely sidelined from the Israel file since those negotiations were leaked.
In the meantime, Witkoff has sought to broker an interim ceasefire deal that would see the release of a fraction of the remaining living hostages.
Hamas has largely rejected such offers, instead seeking to release all hostages at once in exchange for an end to the war, or an interim deal that includes guarantees — potentially in the form of a sanction-threatening UN Security Council resolution — that Israel will hold negotiations on a permanent end to the war.
Such talks were supposed to take place during the phased ceasefire deal that the sides signed in January, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to rework the terms after the fact in order to avoid entering the second phase of the deal, which envisioned a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a permanent end to the war in exchange for the remaining 24 living hostages.
“Nobody on the Israeli side ever negotiated about the second phase. They just backed off and returned to fighting,” Alexander said, referring to the Israeli decision to resume intensive military operations throughout Gaza on March 18. “I don’t see how after weeks of not talking, they could just go back in. I don’t see the logic of that.”
Many of the hostages’ families have called for a more comprehensive deal that would free all 59 remaining hostages, and repeated polls have indicated that a majority of the Israeli public backs ending the war in order to secure such a result.
Netanyahu and much of his government have rejected such a deal, arguing that ending the war and withdrawing Israeli forces from Gaza would leave Hamas in power.
Accordingly, Alexander maintained that an interim deal is the only realistic possibility. “This is what’s going to happen, if it happens. I don’t think a bigger deal is on the table. There is no political landscape that will allow something like that in Israel.”
While Alexander initially argued that Israel’s military pressure over the past month has “moved the needle,” he later maintained that Hamas has not budged from its main demand of seeing an end to the war.
“Both sides need to be equally pressured. Hamas is not in favor of a small deal and [Netanyahu] is not in favor of a big deal,” he said.
US President Donald Trump discussed the Gaza war during a call earlier Tuesday with Netanyahu, according to a US official.
But Trump didn’t include the issue in his brief Truth Social post generally summarizing the call.
“Everything is in no man’s land, and the hostages are in limbo,” Alexander lamented.
The father of the 21-year-old hostage appeared to prefer the way the Trump administration has approached the Gaza war, arguing that former US president Joe Biden’s emphasis on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and an eventual two-state solution to the conflict led Hamas to harden its positions.
However, he added, “I don’t know if [the Trump approach] is more effective because I don’t know if Hamas is softening its approach. The initial demand from Hamas remains the same — to end the war.”
The Times of Israel Community.