Senior Hamas official says US unwilling to pressure Israel, no reason to join talks

A top Hamas official says the Palestinian group is losing faith in the United States’ ability to mediate a ceasefire in Gaza and will only participate in talks if they focus on implementing a proposal detailed by US President Joe Biden in May and endorsed internationally.

“We have informed the mediators that … any meeting should be based on talking about implementation mechanisms and setting deadlines rather than negotiating something new,” says Osama Hamdan, a member of Hamas’s politburo. “Otherwise, Hamas finds no reason to participate.”

The US referred to Biden’s outline as an Israeli proposal and Hamas agreed to it in principle, but Israel said that Biden’s speech was not entirely consistent with the proposal itself. Both sides later proposed changes, leading each to accuse the other of obstructing a deal.

Hamdan accuses Israel of not engaging in good faith and says the group does not believe the US can or will apply pressure on Israel to seal a deal.

Documents provided by Hamdan and confirmed as authentic show that at several points Hamas attempted to add additional guarantors to the talks, including Russia, Turkey and the United Nations, but Israel’s responses always included only the existing mediators, the US, Egypt and Qatar.

He claims Israel has “either sent a non-voting delegation [to the negotiations] or changed delegations from one round to another, so we would start again, or it has imposed new conditions.”

Hamdan acknowledges “some difficulties” and delays in communicating with new Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be hiding deep in the network of tunnels in the Gaza Strip. But Hamdan insists that this does not pose a major barrier to the negotiations.