6 days ago
12
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Officials met Hamas three times, breaking with a policy against contacting a group the U.S. considers a terrorist organization. But Israeli opposition and shifting positions doomed the effort.
April 10, 2025Updated 6:03 a.m. ET
The Americans were in a hurry.
Adam Boehler, a senior U.S. official, wanted Hamas to agree to the release of the last living American Israeli hostage in Gaza so that President Trump could announce his freedom during a speech to Congress.
The two sides were still haggling as Mr. Trump arrived at the Capitol, and they failed to meet the deadline, according to four people familiar with the discussion, leaving the president to make only a passing reference to hostages in Gaza.
Still, the talks, which eschewed decades of entrenched animosity, carried on the next day, demonstrating how eager the two sides were to make a deal.
It all started, and ended, in March. Even though the United States has backed Israel in its campaign in Gaza against Hamas, which launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed some 1,200 people in Israel, Trump administration officials met with senior Hamas officials in Qatar three times, the four people said. The meetings were a break with longstanding U.S. policy against contact with the armed group, which the United States considers a terrorist organization.
Mr. Trump had made releasing all the hostages a key goal, aiming to show success where the Biden administration struggled. In a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, though, his comments on hostages were largely overshadowed by tariff talk and Iran diplomacy.
The March talks underscored the Trump administration’s ad hoc approach to diplomacy. But in the face of furious Israeli opposition, Hamas’s hesitation and the Trump administration’s shifting position, an agreement to free the hostage, Edan Alexander, never came together.
