Netanyahu said to have urged Trump not to listen to Qatari PM’s hostage deal offers
Report says PM told US president in call last week that Qatari leader would present ‘various and strange proposals’ from Hamas during DC visit, implored Trump not to accept them
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Donald Trump during a phone conversation last Tuesday that he should not listen to any hostage deal proposals that Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani was to present during a potential meeting in the White House last week, according to a Sunday report.
The Qatari premier visited Washington last week and held talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, but neither the White House nor Qatar reported a meeting with the president.
According to Channel 12, Netanyahu told Trump that the Qatari leader would come to him “with various and strange proposals” from the Hamas terror group, and that the president “must not accept them.”
“Hamas is pretending and does not intend to truly stand behind any proposal that includes the return of all the hostages,” Netanyahu said, according to the report, which quoted him in Hebrew.
“We must destroy Hamas. We cannot accept a situation where it remains near our border as a threatening force,” he reportedly told Trump, regarding a potential ceasefire deal. “This will not happen. This is an invitation for the next October 7. It is unacceptable even to the Israeli public.”
After their call, Trump declared that he and Netanyahu “are on the same side of every issue.”
The conversation covered “numerous subjects including Trade, Iran, etc.,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. Notably, Trump did not include Gaza or the 59 hostages being held there in his list of topics discussed.
Netanyahu has refused, in any agreement, to end the war or leave Hamas in power as the enclave’s governing body. Israel also refused, during a brief hostage release-ceasefire deal earlier this year, to begin negotiations toward a permanent end to the war, instead allowing the agreement to collapse after its first phase and resuming the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Sunday’s report about Netanyahu’s call for Trump not to listen to any Qatari offers came alongside Hebrew media reports that Qatar recently urged Hamas to reject a new Egyptian proposal for a hostage release-ceasefire deal.
Over the weekend, several Hebrew media outlets published reports that either cited only Israeli officials or no sources at all, claiming that Doha told Hamas to reject Egypt’s proposal, arguing that Doha could secure a better agreement in the form of a long-term truce.
However, the reports were swiftly rejected by an Arab official — who is familiar with the negotiations and is not from Qatar — who told The Times of Israel that they were “manufactured” by Israeli officials who seek to further harm negotiations and deflect blame away from Netanyahu.
Qatar has been a key mediator in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, following the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023, when the Iran-backed terror group — the de facto government of the Gaza Strip — invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
Qatar hosts much of Hamas’s political leadership, at the request of the US and Israel. It also funds the Hamas-friendly Al Jazeera network and, at Israel’s request, sent billions of dollars to the Hamas-run enclave over the decade prior to the October 7 attack.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Jacob Magid and Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.