Witkoff says he connected with Hamas leader al-Hayya over shared experience of losing a son

US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff describes sharing a moment of connection with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya over their shared experience of losing a son, in an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes Program.

The US envoy met with al-Hayya in Egypt earlier this month during negotiations to end the war in Gaza, in a highly unusual face-to-face meeting between a US official and a member of the Palestinian terror group.

He says that when he entered the room for the meeting with the Hamas delegation, he found himself sitting directly next to al-Hayya.

“We expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son,” says Witkoff. “He mentioned it. And I told him that I had lost a son, and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children.”

Witkoff’s late son, Andrew, died at the age of 22 of an opioid overdose. Al-Hayya’s son, Himam al-Hayya, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Hamas headquarters in Doha on September 9, which failed to kill any of the senior Hamas leaders it had targeted.

Kushner, for his part, describes watching the conversation between Witkoff and al-Hayya, whom he describes as a “hardened” person who has “been through two years of war.”

“They green-lit an assault that raped and murdered and did some of the most barbaric things,” he says of Hamas and the October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the two-year war in Gaza. “They’ve been holding hostages while Gaza’s been bombed. And they’ve withstood all the suffering.”

“But when Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.”