Witkoff: Hamas isn’t ideologically intractable, Gaza conflict can end through dialogue
In candid podcast interview, top Trump aide indicates renewed IDF strikes may be necessary after Hamas intransigence, says PM ‘going up against Israeli public opinion that wants hostages back’
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff said Friday that he doesn’t believe Hamas is “ideologically intractable,” while arguing that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “well-motivated,” but operating against Israeli public opinion that prioritizes freeing the remaining hostages from Gaza over the destruction of Hamas.
In a 90-minute interview chock-full of headlines, Witkoff discussed the motivations of Israel, Hamas and Qatar in the ongoing Gaza war, offered an assertive defense of Doha against critics questioning the Islamist country’s motivations, and acknowledged his concern about the Gaza war’s potential for destabilizing countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He also suggested that Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa could be a changed man since his days in Al-Qaeda, revealed new details about his successful January brokering of the now-defunct Gaza ceasefire’s first phase, and insisted that the Iranian nuclear threat can be solved diplomatically.
Witkoff held the conversation with Tucker Carlson, a right-wing talk show host who has come under fire in American Jewish circles for hosting guests who have pushed antisemitic claims and Holocaust revisionism. He is also known to enjoy a very large fan base, particularly among Trump supporters.
The filmed podcast interview began with Trump’s Mideast envoy explaining that his job requires him to understand the motivations of the various players with whom he engages.
“What does Hamas want? I think they want to stay there till the end of time. They want to rule Gaza, and that’s unacceptable. We had to know that… What they want is unacceptable,” Witkoff said.
“What’s acceptable to us is [that] they need to demilitarize. Then maybe they could stay there a little bit… be involved politically,” he continued.
Steve Witkoff has no background in diplomacy but has turned out to be the most effective American diplomat in a generation. Here’s how he’s trying to resolve the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.
(0:00) What Witkoff Has Learned as Trump’s Global Negotiator
(4:10) Negotiating With… pic.twitter.com/7AUh4gvwke— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) March 21, 2025
“But… we can’t have a terrorist organization running Gaza because that won’t be acceptable to Israel. Then we’ll just have the same exact experiences, that every five, 10, 15 years we’re going to have another October 7.”
Pressed on what it’s like negotiating with Hamas, Witkoff acknowledged that he’s not talking to the terror group directly and that he uses Qatar as a mediator.
The US envoy did sign off on Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler holding secret direct talks with Hamas officials earlier this year. However, Washington abandoned those talks after they were leaked by Israel, which learned about them after the fact and fumed over Boehler negotiating on its behalf, a senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel earlier this month.
Hamas’s motivations
While he has worked to understand Hamas through the negotiations, Witkoff said he was also informed by the footage compilation of the terror group’s October 7 onslaught that Israeli authorities screened for him during his first visit to Israel upon taking the position.
“It was horrific. It is about mass rapes. There were pictures of Hamas people cutting the head off of an Israeli soldier… It’s beyond what I’ve ever seen,” he recalled.
“It can taint the way you’re going to feel about [Hamas]. Sometimes as a negotiator, you have to be dispassionate,” Witkoff continued. “It’s not easy to make decisions if you’re going to [watch the film], but I had to see [it]… We can’t ignore the reality of what happened on October 7. They would tell you that they’ve got justification, but there’s no justification… for what happened that day.”
Still, Witkoff went back to the importance of understanding Hamas’s motivations.
“You have to know what Hamas wants… and then you’ve got to figure out what you can give them that allows them to walk out because that’s what’s needed here,” he said.
“What we heard in the beginning of this conflict is Hamas is ideological, that they’re prepared to die for a whole variety of reasons. I personally — and I talk to the president about this… I said to him, ‘I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in.’ They’re not ideologically intractable… They strap the suicide vest onto young kids who don’t know what they’re doing… They tell them a story.”
“What we heard in the beginning of this conflict is Hamas is ideological, that they’re prepared to die for a whole variety of reasons. I personally — and I talk to the president about this… I said to him, ‘I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in’. They’re not ideologically intractable. I never believed that,” Witkoff maintained. “They strap the suicide vest onto young kids who don’t know what they’re doing… They tell them a story.
“Once you understand that [Hamas] wanted to live, then you were able to talk to them in a more effective way,” he argued.
Pressed on how he reached this conclusion about Hamas, Witkoff said he has read lots of US intelligence reports and also felt “the rhythm and the cadence of the negotiation.”
“That’s when I came to the conclusion that they wanted alternatives,” he said.
The comments rationalizing Hamas were somewhat similar to ones made by Boehler in a series of interviews with American and Israeli press on March 9 that infuriated Netanyahu and his inner circle. The premier’s top aide, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, went on to lobby Trump officials to sideline Boehler after those interviews, a US official told The Times of Israel earlier this month.
Regardless, Hamas has yet to move from its stance in the negotiations as Witkoff had hoped.
The terror group snubbed a bridge proposal he submitted last week that would have seen phase one of the ceasefire extended through next month’s Passover holiday, along with the release of five live hostages and a large number of Palestinian security prisoners.
Hamas has insisted on sticking to the original terms of the deal Witkoff helped ink in January, which should have seen negotiations on a second phase begin some two weeks into the ceasefire. But Israel refused to proceed with such talks, as a second phase would obligate the IDF to fully withdraw its troops from Gaza and agree to a permanent end to the war.
While Netanyahu signed on to these terms, he has also insisted that he will not agree to end the war before Hamas’s military and governing capabilities have been dismantled. The US accepted the Israeli stance and worked to extend the first phase, rather than proceeding with the second.
Hamas didn’t accept the approach and instead offered to release American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander along with the bodies of four other hostages with US citizenship — an offer that was based on the discussions that the terror group held with Boehler earlier this month, the senior Arab diplomat said. But the Trump administration had already moved on from those direct talks, and Witkoff on March 16 called the Hamas proposal a “non-starter.”
Two days later, Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza for the first time in two months under orders from Netanyahu, who cited the terror group’s “repeated refusal” to release hostages.
Ceasefire can still be restored
Still, Witkoff maintained Friday that he was hopeful the ceasefire could be restored. “There have been signs,” he said.
“The Israelis going in [to Gaza] is in some respects unfortunate, and in some respects falls into the ‘had to be’ bucket.”
Witkoff recalled warning Arab leaders during a gathering in Doha last week that Hamas’s “completely inappropriate” response to the bridge proposal “was going to result in some sort of military action.”
“I did not know before the Israelis went in,” he clarified, appearing to contradict claims by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier this week that Israel had consulted the US before ending the Gaza ceasefire.
Nonetheless, Witkoff insisted that “We may be able to use this to get Hamas to be a whole lot more reasonable.”
The Trump envoy later revealed that the sides “are talking again” since the Israeli strikes.
“We’re in a negotiation right now to maybe stop some of these Israeli strikes and maybe finish this conflict with dialogue,” he said. If I don’t have a feeling that we can accomplish that, why would I waste my time?”
For his part, the senior Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel that the talks have been stuck since the IDF renewed airstrikes.
Netanyahu vs. public opinion on the hostages
The question that Witkoff appeared to have a harder time answering focused on the Israeli government’s plan for Gaza after the war.
Carlson reflected on his conversations with officials throughout the region who were all equally perplexed as to what Israel views as its end game and he asked Witkoff if he understood it.
“Well, I think that’s complicated,” the US envoy said before shifting his answer to praise Netanyahu for Israel’s military achievements against Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran.
“That Iranian crescent… that everybody thought was going to be effective, it’s been largely eliminated.”
The rap [Netanyahu] gets is that he’s more concerned about the fight than he is about the hostages… I understand how people make that assessment, but I don’t necessarily agree with it
Netanyahu has “done an exceptional job with that. But the rap he gets is that he’s more concerned about the fight than he is about the hostages,” Witkoff explained.
“I understand how people make that assessment, but I don’t necessarily agree with it. He does want to get hostages home — if he can — but he believes that pressuring Hamas is the only way to do it.”
“I think Bibi feels that he’s doing the right thing. [But] I think he goes up against public opinion… because public opinion there wants those hostages home,” he said.
Indeed, repeated polls over recent weeks indicate a sizable majority of the public backs ending the war in exchange for securing the release of the remaining 59 hostages.
Witkoff recalled his visit to Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square during his time in Israel. “It was spiritual.”
Witkoff said that the loss of his son to a drug overdose has given him a “sensitivity or empathy” that has allowed him to relate to hostage families with whom he is in daily contact. “That’s been a big help for them, but interestingly enough, it’s been a big help for me.”
The hostage crisis has “fractured Israel,” Witkoff maintained. “It’s like a seam cutting right through the soul of the country.”
“We’ve got to get these people back. I talked to Bibi about it, I talked to [Strategic Affairs Minister Ron] Dermer about it, but they also have a view strategically about Hamas,” he continued.
“There are times that we agree with each other, there are times we slightly disagree, but I think they’re well motivated,” Witkoff clarified.
Does Israel have a plan?
Pressed again on what Israel’s plan for Gaza, Witkoff seemed to avoid responding directly.
“I understand that we have to be outcome-oriented,” he said before pivoting to how solving Iran’s destabilizing regional activities could lead to unprecedented regional cooperation
Carlson then tries to frame the question in terms of the map, asking how much territory Israel is looking to conquer after reaching deep into Lebanon and Syria. “What’s the goal?” he asks.
“The goal begins with how do we deal with Iran. That’s the biggie,” Witkoff responded. “We can never allow someone to have a nuclear weapon and have outsized influence.”
Carlson tried to steer the conversation back to Gaza, asking if the US could articulate Israel’s approach.
“I think so,” Witkoff said.
“First of all, President Trump’s approach to Gaza has engendered a lot of lively discussion about different ways to deal with Gaza,” he said, referring to Trump’s February proposal for the US to take over the Strip and relocate Palestinians elsewhere.
“We’re now seeing an Egyptian plan, we’re seeing the Saudis put together a white paper,” Witkoff said in what appeared to be the first official mention of a separate Saudi plan for Gaza in the works.
The Egyptian proposal was a counter to Trump’s call to relocate Gazans, instead envisioning Palestinians being able to remain in the enclave while it is being rebuilt and managed by a temporary committee of Palestinian technocrats who would hand over control over the Strip to the Palestinian Authority after six months.
While it hinted at it, the plan didn’t explicitly address the demilitarization of Hamas, and Washington’s response has accordingly been lukewarm, at best.
Wiktoff made no mention of Israel’s plan for Gaza, but insisted that “what we’re going to do with Gaza is going to become much more apparent over the next six to 12 months.”
The lack of an Israeli plan for the post-war management of Gaza has long exposed Netanyahu to criticism. From the first weeks of the war, the previous US administration pleaded with the premier to put together a plan for the post-war management of Gaza, arguing that failure to advance a viable alternative to Hamas would lead to the IDF being bogged down in the Strip indefinitely.
Netanyahu pushed back on those calls by arguing that such planning was futile so long as Hamas remains in the picture. Months later, he said his government was working on plans to wrestle control of humanitarian aid from Hamas but they have yet to be implemented.
Finally, after Trump announced his Gaza takeover proposal, Netanyahu quickly adopted it as Israel’s new plan for the “day after” in Gaza. But while Jerusalem has engaged in talks with the Trump administration aimed at identifying countries that will take Gazans, no such volunteers have emerged.
Carlson noted Friday that despite the mounting military victories Jerusalem has achieved over the past year, Israelis he engages with still give off the impression that they’re under threat.
I don’t think anyone has a feeling that you can just kill off Hamas. It’s an idea… [but] we just can’t have an October 7 ever again. October 7 was like 9/11 in the United States
“There’s a feeling with some of, ‘When does the violence end? At what point have we had enough of it? That’s the issue,” Witkoff responded.
“I don’t think anyone has a feeling that you can just kill off Hamas. It’s an idea… [but] we just can’t have an October 7 ever again. October 7 was like 9/11 in the United States.”
The meaning of ‘two-state’
Witkoff argued that the key to getting the Abraham Accords normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors back on track is “stability on Gaza.”
“Stability on Gaza could mean some people come back, it could mean some people don’t come back,” he said of Palestinians.
While Trump initially said that Gaza’s entire population would be permanently relocated, he clarified earlier this month that no Palestinians will be forcibly evicted.
“We’re going to attempt to ascertain different development plans for Gaza. They could involve the word two-state (solution). [They] could not,” Witkoff revealed.
“I use the word, [and] I could be attacked for it. To me, it’s just a word. What two-state to me means is how do we have a better living prescription for Palestinians who are living in Gaza?” he said.
“But it’s not just about housing. Maybe it’s about AI coming there. Maybe it’s about hyper-scale data centers being seeded into that area… Maybe it’s about blockchain and robotics coming there. Maybe it’s about pharmaceutical manufacturing coming there,” Witkoff continued. “We can’t rebuild Gaza [for it to again become] a welfare system.”
We need real elections in Gaza… We need a real security force there… If Israel thinks they’re going to have a problem in Gaza because Hamas is going to be there long-term, this is never going to end
“We need real elections in Gaza… We need a real security force there… If Israel thinks they’re going to have a problem in Gaza because Hamas is going to be there long-term, this is never going to end,” he said.
Potential for regional spill-over
Alongside his aspirations for Gaza are also concerns for regional destabilization if the war there drags on.
“King Abdullah in Jordan has done an amazing job figuring out how to how to deal with that instability, but in some respects, he’s been lucky,” Witkoff said.
He warned that the recent rollback of Iranian proxies in Syria and Lebanon “could all be reversed if we lose Egypt.”
Pointing to Egypt’s high youth unemployment, Witkoff said, “A country can’t exist like that. They’re largely broke. They need a lot of help.”
Notably, the Trump aide made no mention of Egypt’s role in mediating between Israel and Hamas — as he has in the past — focusing solely on Qatar.
The concern even extends to Saudi Arabia, where “people are worried about [the] young population and how they’re looking at [the Gaza war], which is why we’ve got to solve Gaza,” the Trump envoy argued.
“If we solve Gaza… then Saudi can normalize,” Wiktoff said.
Riyadh has repeatedly insisted, though, that it will not normalize relations with Israel absent Jerusalem agreeing to a credible, irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state, which Netanyahu has long rejected.
Still, Witkoff said, “We’re going to be announcing several new countries who are joining,” and separately claimed that Lebanon and Syria are potential candidates.
People do change. You at 55 are completely different than how you were at 35… I’m a different person today at 68 years old. So maybe Jolani in Syria is a different guy
“The indications are that Jolani is a different person than he once was,” he argued, referring to Syria’s interim leader Ahmed al-Sharaa by the nom de guerre he held as a senior al-Qaeda operative.
“People do change. You at 55 are completely different than how you were at 35… I’m a different person today at 68 years old,” Witkoff said. “So maybe Jolani in Syria is a different guy. They’ve driven Iran out.”
As for Turkey — which is currently rocked by its unrest following the regime’s arrest of Istanbul’s mayor and a prominent rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — Witkoff appeared similarly optimistic.
Trump “had a great conversation with Erdogan a couple of days ago — really transformational,” he continued. “There’s a lot of positive news coming out of Turkey right now as a result of that conversation. You’ll see that in the reporting in the coming days.”
In defense of Qatar
Witkoff was also given the opportunity to address criticism over his warm relations with Qatar, which began before he entered the Trump administration when he was a real estate investor.
Qatar has been accused of supporting Hamas and other extremist factions in the region. Doha has countered that its hosting of Hamas officials was at the request of Israel and the US. Jerusalem and Washington also urged the Gulf kingdom to funnel large amounts of aid to Gaza, which has come under renewed scrutiny since October 7, with critics arguing that it allowed Hamas to amass its military arsenal.
“The Qataris… are criticized for not being well motivated. It’s preposterous. They are well motivated,” Witkoff said, using the same term he used to characterize Israel’s leadership.
The Qataris… are good, decent people… They’re a Muslim nation. In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical from an Islamist standpoint than they are today, but they… moderated quite a bit. There’s no doubt that they’re an ally of the United States. They fund everything, [and] they don’t ask for much
“They’re good, decent people. What they want is a mediation that’s effective [and] that gets to a peace goal… Because they’re a small nation, and they want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker,” he asserted. “If they had a different agenda, it would be fine, as long as we weren’t operating blind.”
He dismissed as “preposterous” the criticism that the Qataris operate as agents of Iran.
“They’re a Muslim nation. In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical from an Islamist standpoint than they are today, but [Qatar] has moderated quite a bit. There’s no doubt that they’re an ally of the United States,” he said, highlighting the US military base that Doha hosts. “They fund everything, [and] they don’t ask for much.”
Witkoff said he was initially criticized for being a “pro-Qatari sympathizer.”
“They’re a mediator… No different than the Swiss and the Norwegians. They’ve mediated in Russia. They’ve mediated in Afghanistan… they’re good at it,” he continued. “If I’m not collaborating with the mediator, I’m bound to be ineffective.”
Intimidating the parties
Carlson asked Witkoff about reports — including in The Times of Israel — that he managed to sway Netanyahu more in one fateful January meeting than Biden did in countless interactions aimed at wrapping up the war.
“President Trump sets the table. This whole ‘Peace through strength’ thing — it’s not just a slogan. It actually works. When he dispatches you to go to the Middle East, people are almost a little bit intimidated before you get there,” Witkoff reflected.
He said Israel, Hamas and Qatar all didn’t want to defy Trump by refusing to accept the ceasefire. “It was the president’s overarching personality, and letting everybody know that success was not an option. It had to be.”
“The story was that you just kind of rolled in and said, ‘Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what the president wants,” Carlson primed.
“Well, that’s what [Trump] would do. So that’s what I did,” responded a smiling Witkoff.
What was in Trump’s letter to Khamenei
Closing the interview on Iran, Witkoff argued that a diplomatic resolution to mounting US tensions with the Islamic Republic is possible.
He revealed the general message in the letter Trump sent to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei earlier this month.
“It roughly said, ‘I’m a president of peace. That’s what I want. There’s no reason for us to do this militarily. We should talk. We should we should clear up misconceptions. We should create a verification program so that nobody worries about weaponization of your nuclear material, and I’d like to get us to that place because the alternative is not a very good alternative,'” Witkoff said.
He revealed that Tehran has since responded to the US through intermediaries, without going into specifics.
“The president… doesn’t want to go to war, and he’ll use military action to stop a war. That’s when he actually wants to use military action. In this particular case, hopefully, it won’t be necessary,” Witkoff added, expressing his hope that he or another Trump aide would be able to travel to Tehran for talks aimed at a detente.
- Israel & the Region
- Tucker Carlson
- Steve Witkoff
- Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2023-2025 Israel-Hamas war
- Donald Trump
- Trump's Gaza proposal
- Hamas
- US-Qatar relations
- Benjamin Netanyahu
- Israel-Saudi Arabia relations
- Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi
- Abdullah II
- Egypt
- Jordan
- Gaza Strip
- Ahmed al-Sharaa
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan
- Ali Khamenei
The Times of Israel Community.