The US has been talking to Hamas through an American intermediary in Doha this week hoping to intermediate a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Gaza, according to a source familiar with the matter, as US officials say President Donald Trump is increasingly frustrated with how Israel is dealing with conflict.
The negotiations were led by the American side by Bishara Bahbah, the American-Palestine who led the group “Arabs for Trump” during the 2024 presidential campaign and has worked on behalf of the government, the source said.
Bahbah exchanged messages with Hamas earlier this year, which became an essential secret channel to protect the Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, the source said.
Israel also started indirect conversations with Hamas in the capital of Qatar on Saturday (17), and the dialogue proceeds. However, reinforcing the line between the Trump government and Hamas could give US authorities a clearer notion of Hamas’s position, especially with Trump’s increased frustrations. In the past, the US went through Qatar and Egypt to correspond with Hamas.
“It tells me that they believe they are really negotiating. They want their own channel to Hamas, not through Qatar or Egypt. This is an indicator that they believe they can deal with issues more effectively and also that they can influence Hamas,” Dennis Ross, former US sweetened to the Middle East, said at the East East Institute near Washington.
But some other regional experts doubt that this channel may lead to a breakthrough, as Bahbah has limited experience and Hamas’s decision makers are based on Gaza. However, they argue that this reinforces Trump’s willingness to circumvent Israel.
“I’m not sure if this is a sign of despair or confusion,” said Aaron David Miller, senior researcher at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Maybe they see him as a window to Hamas’s thought; he is certainly plausible.”
The growing frustrations between Trump and his main advisers with Israel boil down to a fundamental question: the president wants war to end – and soon. Trump, according to several sources familiar with the subject, has already been “annoyed” on several occasions with the pace of negotiations.
And they fear that Netanyahu is not ready to negotiate.
“The president obviously wants an agreement,” a person close to Trump told CNN . “It’s getting clearer as negotiations advance, that Bibi hasn’t gotten there yet.”
With Israel launching new attacks on Gaza, Vice President JD Vance chose not to visit the country over the weekend after his trip to Italy-a decision that, according to sources, was partly motivated by logistics and partly because his presence could have been seen as a dramatic endorsement of the attacks.
“It would be hard to see the US as truly independent if he had gone away,” the authority added, calling it “an excessively generous sign of support to what Israel is doing.”
Axios was the first to report Trump’s frustrations and the reasoning behind Vance’s decision not to stop in Israel.
The sources warned that Trump’s frustrations do not mean a change of posture in the support of the United States to Israel, a country that the president continues to consider one of the strongest allies in the US. Trump is not pressuring Israel in particular to interrupt his new military operation in the Gaza Strip, a source said with the matter.
National Security Council spokesman Max Bluestein argued in a statement to CNN that “it is absolutely false” that the government is frustrated with Israel.
“Israel had no better friend than President Trump. We continue to work closely with our ally Israel to ensure that the remaining hostages in Gaza are released, that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon and that all opportunities for regional economic prosperity – especially the expansion of Abraham’s agreements – are explored. [Marco] Rubio explained over the weekend: ‘What the president is saying is that he doesn’t want to end the war until Hamas is defeated,’ ”said Bluestein.
Trump has shown the willingness to address US foreign policy changes without direct adherence to Israel in recent months, including the announcement of a ceasefire with the Houthis-which did not include attacks on Israel and the continuity of the agreement with Iran, while Israel pressed on attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
“There are a number of actions lately reflecting that Trump will do what he believes in US interest, and Israeli considerations are not first in his mind. This does not necessarily reflect a break with Israel, but it is an effort to focus their energy into US interests,” Ross said.
Keeping US interests first-especially the efforts Trump wants to undertake in the region more broadly-the government is still focused on trying to ensure a ceasefire in Gaza.
Bahbah has coordinated his efforts with Steve Witkoff, sent from the president to the Middle East, who also maintains direct contact with Netanyahu and his advisors. Witkoff recently presented a new proposal to Israel and Hamas that could serve as a basis for both sides to agree with another ceasefire, Trump government officials said.
One of the authorities said the US wants humanitarian aid to continue in Gaza, something the Israelis agreed last Sunday after blocking the lane help for almost 11 weeks.
Israel “can achieve its goal of defeating Hamas and even allowing help in sufficient quantities,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday (20).
“You have this acute and immediate challenge of food and help not reach people, and you have existing distribution systems that could take them there,” Rubio told Senate appropriations committee.
Asked if this is a humanitarian emergency situation, Rubio admitted yes.
“In the end, I think we all see the same images,” he said.
The Trump administration was also pleased with the unfolding of negotiations with Hamas for Alexander’s release, the last living American hostage known in Gaza in recent weeks. Instead of closing the channel between Hamas and Bahbah, they raised it, authorizing face -to -face negotiations in Doha.
“His release was widely seen internally as a gesture of goodwill,” an employee of the White House told CNN adding that they saw the measure as an important opportunity to attract Israel and Hamas back to the negotiating table.
But a few days later, Israeli military forces advanced north and southern Gaza as part of the operation “Carriage of Gideon”, which Israel warned that it would occur if Hamas did not agree with a deal to release hostages. The new attacks did little to reassure US authorities that a possible ceasefire agreement was on the horizon.
But Trump’s frustrations with Netanyahu began even before the war took another deadly course this week, sources said familiar with the subject.
An example of this was when the Israeli Prime Minister met in particular with the then-president of the president, Michael Waltz, in the White House to discuss military options against Iran before a meeting scheduled at the Oval Hall with Trump.
The meeting, initially reported by the Washington Post, was cited as a key point of Trump’s frustration with Waltz, which was later deprived of office. But a source familiar with the subject said Trump also questioned the possibility of Netanyahu trying to influence Waltz on a delicate topic before approaching him directly with Trump.
This content was originally published in US negate ceasefire in Gaza via Americans in Doha, says source on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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