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Monday, August 11, 2025
Palestinian-American mediator says full hostage-truce deal reachable, but months away
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Bishara Bahbah, the Palestinian-American activist who has served as a mediator in hostage release-ceasefire negotiations between Israel and the Hamas terror group, says reaching a comprehensive deal to free the captives and end the war in Gaza could take months.
“A full deal is reachable, but it’s going to take months,” he tells i24 News in an interview.
He adds, however, that a full deal might be hastened if a partial deal is reached first.
Bahbah also tells the outlet that Israel and Hamas were within reach of a partial deal weeks ago, before Jerusalem ordered the negotiating team back to Israel from Qatar and the US and Israel rejected Hamas’s offer.
He makes the same assertion to Channel 13, saying, “There was an opportunity to come to a [partial] deal, and honestly, I don’t know why we did not pursue that, because if we did, we would have had a [partial] deal about two and a half, three weeks ago.”
Bahbah, who chaired the “Arab Americans for Trump” group during the most recent US presidential election, has been used periodically to send messages between the US and Hamas and played a key role in the May release of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander.
The Times of Israel Community.