U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff criticized Hamas for its response to a proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, calling the response “totally unacceptable.”
In a post on X, Witkoff stated that Hamas “should accept the framework proposal” that was put forward, adding that it was “the only way” to “close a 60-day ceasefire day” in the next few days.
“I received the Hamas response to the United States’ proposal,” Witkoff said. “It is totally unacceptable and only takes us backward. Hamas should accept the framework proposal we put forward as the basis for proximity talks, which we can begin immediately this coming week.”
Witkoff continued:
That is the only way we can close a 60-day ceasefire deal in the coming days in which half of the living hostages and half of those who are deceased will come home to their families and in which we can have at the proximity talks substantive negotiations in good-faith to try to reach a permanent ceasefire.
Hamas’s response comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the controversial proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, while Hamas had reportedly criticized it.
Breitbart News previously reported that the ceasefire proposal deal “calls for the release of 10 living hostages — roughly half of those remaining — as well as the bodies of 18 dead Israeli hostages.”
Witkoff’s ceasefire proposal calls for the release of 10 living hostages — roughly half of those remaining — as well as the bodies of 18 dead Israeli hostages, in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire, 125 convicted Palestinian terrorists serving life sentences, 1, 111 Gaza residents detained during the present conflict, and the resumption of humanitarian aid through the United Nations, i.e. not the new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
In Hamas’s response to Witkoff’s proposed hostage and ceasefire deal, Hamas requested that the “sequence and the timetable for the release of the 10 live hostages and the bodies of the 18 dead hostages” be changed, and also requested that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “fully withdraw to the lines it was positioned before the previous ceasefire collapsed in March,” Axios reported.
Hamas’s response was sent through Bishara Bahbah, a Palestinian-American businessman, as well as to mediators in Egypt and Qatar, according to the outlet.
WASHINGTON, DC — Senior adviser and assistant to the president Steve Witkoff told Breitbart News that any reports of a rift between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are fake news and “preposterous.”
“I’ll tell you, first of all, it sounds like we have a very similar thought process that half these reports we discount so maybe we should discount more than half,” Witkoff said in an exclusive interview filmed at the White House last week when asked about such reports. “I think this report is going to be deadly accurate here, but Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli people are a staunch ally of the United States and it goes back the other way. I’ve been at multiple meetings with the president and the Prime Minister—they’re friendly. They’re good friends in fact. That doesn’t mean they agree on absolutely everything and I think that’s the tendency, right? You have a newspaper person who hears about a small disagreement about something that normal human beings like me and you would pay no attention to, but that particular newspaper reporter then conflates that into some large article about some massive issues that they have? It’s preposterous. Israel is a great partner for the United States, strategically, economically, we think very much alike, we have very similar objectives. They don’t want to see a weaponized nuclear state in the state of Iran. And so, I don’t think there’s much daylight between how they think and how we think from a foreign policy perspective.”
Witkoff’s comments come ahead of Trump’s visit to the Middle East this week, where the president is set to go to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. They also come as Witkoff on Sunday meets with representatives of the Iranian government for the fourth time this year in Oman as he seeks to hammer out a nuclear agreement between Iran and the U.S.
Last week, Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported in Hebrew citing two anonymous sources close to Trump that the president was “disappointed” in Netanyahu and was deciding to go it alone in the Middle East separate from Israel. That Witkoff is dismissing that report is a very big deal, and likely welcome news in Israel as Israelis have been somewhat uneasy watching Trump’s inner circle push toward deals with Iran and to end the war in Gaza.
Notably, Netanyahu himself has spoken very highly of his interactions with Trump this year. After his summit in February with Trump, Netanyahu told Breitbart News it was the “best meeting ever” between an Israeli Prime Minister and an American president. As such, it’s been hard to believe that the two sides would have gotten so far off the rails after starting this year so strongly.
Witkoff has been instrumental in negotiations in Gaza and with Iran, and asked where things stand in Gaza he said he is disappointed that all the hostages have yet to be released but holds out hope that Hamas will relent and release them soon. But he said that Hamas has not accepted what he views as a reasonable deal for nearly two months now, and he still thinks Hamas should “say yes to it.”
“There are some aspects of it that are disappointing to me,” Witkoff said. “I wish we could have gotten the last group of hostages out. We may still get them out. I think that it’s a tense negotiation. We’re in talks every single day. We’re in talks with the Israelis, we’re talking to the Qataris, the Egyptians, the Emiratis—everybody is focused, particularly as the president’s trip is coming up, to get a better result, a peaceful result. We’re hoping that we can do that without the Israelis having to go in. There’s some talk about that but I hope it doesn’t have to happen. We have a deal on the table that Hamas could have taken six weeks ago. I’ve discussed this with the Israelis at length and the other stakeholders in this process. Hamas should say yes to it. It is a path to a peaceful dialogue and maybe even a peaceful, long-term, durable solution to this. But Hamas is going to have to demilitarize, and they’re going to have to quickly get to the terms we’ve set forth and we hope that they do.”
Asked why Hamas is not accepting the terms of the negotiation, Witkoff said he cannot logically explain “their intransigence” but also suggested some of their conditions might be getting lost in translation as he and the U.S. are not directly communicating with Hamas but talking to them through intermediaries. He said he would possibly be willing to talk to Hamas directly if the president ordered him to, but really cast doubt on whether it is a good idea for the U.S. to be communicating with a terrorist organization.
“I wish as a sensible person that I could explain their intransigence,” Witkoff said. “I wish I could. But I can’t. Remember, I’m not talking to them directly so there’s some dilution because we’re talking to them indirectly through people and indirectly is not necessarily the best way to negotiate but in this particular circumstance talking to a terrorist group? I might do it if the president allowed me to do it, but it doesn’t feel to me like something that we belong doing right now. They need—I have stated this publicly—they need to show us a sign they are prepared to act in a positive and proactive way that is better for the people of Gaza and that leads to a long-term durable peace. If they do that, I think they’ll get a good positive response from this country and if they don’t they won’t.”
More from Witkoff’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News at the White House is forthcoming.
WASHINGTON — Senior adviser and assistant to the president Steve Witkoff told Breitbart News exclusively that the government of Iran has told him that the Iranians have agreed they do not want a nuclear weapon.
Witkoff, who made the explosive revelation in an exclusive long-form on-camera interview with Breitbart News on Thursday at the White House, is leading negotiations for President Donald Trump with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Witkoff is expected to meet with the Iranians, possibly as soon as this weekend, for a fourth round of talks in Oman, after two previous discussions in Iran and another in Rome. Witkoff will be meeting with them during a broader trip to the Middle East this upcoming week, where President Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Witkoff is joining Trump for those legs of the trip, but breaking off on his own to meet with the Iranians separately in Oman at the president’s direction.
“We’ve stated our position. The Iranians cannot have a bomb. They have stated back that they don’t want one,” Witkoff told Breitbart News. “So we’re going to, for the purposes of this discussion, take them at their word that that’s actually how they feel. If that’s how they feel, then their enrichment facilities have to be dismantled. They cannot have centrifuges. They have to downblend all of their fuel that they have there and send it to a faraway place—and they have to convert to a civil program if they want to run a civil program. Now, they have a civil reactor actually in the state of Iran—it’s called Bushehr. They have no enrichment capability at this place and if we take them at their word why not just turn all the rest of their facilities just like Bushehr? Bushehr they have no ability to enrich, they have no ability to have centrifuges there, they can only use that facility for civilian purposes—making of electricity and things of that sort of civilian purposes—and if that is what they choose to do, if they believe in that program, they ought to expand it if they want to. An enrichment program can never exist in the state of Iran ever again. That’s our red line. No enrichment. That means dismantlement, it means no weaponization, and it means that Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan—those are their three enrichment facilities—have to be dismantled.”
Asked if an eventual deal with the Iranians would look like former President Barack Obama’s failed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or if it would be a tougher deal, Witkoff said the Iranians are in a “more vulnerable” position than they were a decade ago during JCPOA negotiations and therefore any eventual deal will be much stronger.
“I think they’re a lot more vulnerable today but look, we’re not—the purpose here is to actually sit with them, talk with them, and talk them through why they should do it our way,” Witkoff said. “They may not accept that, but it makes no sense to me why they wouldn’t accept it. First of all, we’re never doing a JCPOA deal where sanctions come off and there’s no sunsetting of their obligations. That doesn’t make sense. That was a mismatched procedure in JCPOA. We believe that they cannot have enrichment, they cannot have centrifuges, they cannot have anything that allows them to build a weapon. We believe in all of that. That was not JCPOA. JCPOA had sunset provisions that burned off the obligations and burned off the sanctions relief at inappropriate times. It’s never going to happen in this deal.”
Witkoff added that he thinks it would be “unwise” for the Iranians to “test President Trump,” and believes “they have no choice” but to accept the U.S. terms for a denuclearization deal.
“Well, I’m a rational, sensible person,” Witkoff said. “So, I just believe they have no choice. Obviously, they can say no and they can test President Trump but I think that would be an unwise thing to do. I don’t mean that in a confrontational way to them if they end up watching this show. I mean it is a reality. They cannot have a bomb and they have said they do not want a bomb. They have attested to it. They have said they only want to operate in a civil way. There are multiple civil nuclear programs all over the world and they are operating without enrichment capability. They don’t need enrichment capability to operate a civil program.”
Witkoff also said that the U.S. will not accept a bad deal, and will walk away if it is not very strong.
“That’s correct,” Witkoff said when asked if the U.S. would not accept a bad deal. “And look, we didn’t think that the talks last week were going to be productive because we needed to get to certain understandings with them, and hopefully this Sunday they will be productive. Hopefully that means they will continue those talks. If they are not productive on Sunday, then they won’t continue and we’ll have to take a different route.”
While talks at this moment are focused exclusively on nuclear issues, Witkoff did say, when asked if there is a possibility of expanding the talks with Iran to include cultural and economic planks of a deal or vision with the West similar to human rights provisions contained in 1970s era deals with the Soviet Union like the Helsinki agreement, that he thinks that could happen in later phases of talks when the Iranians get there on nuclear talks. He also said that in later phases the U.S. intends to pressure the Iranians to stop funding and supplying weapons to groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
“We’re inviting Iran to be a member of the league of nations,” Witkoff said. “We think that they are an industrious people, a smart people historically, savvy, good merchants—all those sorts of things. I have plenty of friends who are of Iranian heritage and there are some interesting people—authors and doctors and lawyers and so forth. We’re saying to Iran: ‘You can be a better nation. We can do business with you. We can have strategic relationships with you. But you can’t be a provocateur.’ Now, our negotiations with them today is limited to nuclear. But do we think they need to stop enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and pulling back from being a provocateur? We do believe that. That’s a secondary discussion. Do we think that they should not be supplying weapons to people we consider to be our enemies? We believe that. But again, we don’t want to confuse the nuclear discussion because that to us is the existential issue. That’s the issue that needs to be solved today and quickly.”
More from Witkoff’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.
