Adam Boehler, President Donald Trump’s hostage envoy, perhaps still officially in the position as you read this, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that the US is “not an agent of Israel.”

In the interview, Boehler confirmed the president’s approval of the unprecedented discussions this century with Hamas officials. According to The Jerusalem Post, on 4 March, Boehler met in Doha with Khalil al-Hayya, head of the Hamas negotiating team, and earlier with other senior Hamas officials. He would not rule out another engagement with Hamas officials, though on Monday Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Boehler’s effort was a “one-off” and that “as of now, it hasn’t borne fruit. Doesn’t mean he was wrong to try.”

Tapper noted that Axios journalist Barak Ravid reported “top Israeli official Ron Dermer strongly discouraged” Boehler from speaking to Hamas during “a tense phone call.”

Boehler said he was “sympathetic” to Dermer’s position.

“He has someone that he doesn’t know well making direct contact with Hamas. Maybe I would see them and say, look, they don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”

Of course, Boehler didn’t actually say that Hamas doesn’t have “horns growing out of their head” or are “pretty nice guys,” but that’s how it was interpreted in some quarters.

Tapper failed to follow up to see if Boehler would refute the horns trope.

There was such uncertainty about the grammatical implications of Boehler’s remarks – “pretty nice guys”!– that the envoy attempted to clarify later on Sunday, tweeting in Trumpian style of Hamas: “They are BY DEFINITION BAD people.”

Rubio had tweeted that “we are saying these terrorists must release all of the hostages immediately or be destroyed” – along, presumably, with perpetrating further genocide as during the Biden administration.

Boehler wrote this just weeks after Israeli occupation forces killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians in a Gaza raid in order to extract four Israelis. The value he places on Palestinian life is very low.

In September he went farther when he argued that “we should focus our efforts on routing Hamas – this is the path to cease fire and saving our US hostages.”

President Joe Biden lacked the vigor and independence necessary to break with Netanyahu, both on getting Americans (and Israelis) out of Gaza and preventing the Gaza genocide. Trump is tentatively forging a different path on negotiations though time will tell on the genocide.

Speaking to Fox News, also on Sunday, Boehler referred to “very productive talks” with Hamas.

He added, “Hamas did orient toward a long-term truce as they called it. A truce where they would be disarmed, a truce where they would not be part of the political policy, and a truce where we would ensure that they are in a place where they can’t hurt Israel. Part of that was rebuilding Gaza.”

Pushing back on concerns from the Fox interviewer about giving Hamas added “legitimacy,” he expanded on the meaning of his dialogue with Hamas.

“Dialogue does not mean giving things. Dialogue doesn’t mean giving millions or billions of dollars like the prior administration did. Dialogue means sitting, hearing what someone wants, and then identifying ‘does it fit with what we want or not’ and then ‘how can you get somewhere in the middle and not have a war.’”

He added such dialogues are important to the president and, as “he constantly says, he doesn’t want war.”

The comments surely didn’t sit well with Netanyahu and the far right in Israel – or with many Israel supporters in the US Congress – to hear Boehler emphasize meeting in the middle or, for that matter, that the envoy is asking, “How do you create the circumstances to stop this war?” Right-wing Israeli leaders have been very clear that they want a return to overwhelming Israeli violence in Gaza.

Questioned about Trump’s 5 March threat to the “People of Gaza” that there would be “HELL TO PAY” if captives weren’t turned over and what that meant, Boehler turned menacing. Acknowledging Trump had given no deadline – though special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said today there is one and reiterated a Trump threat – Boehler recalled the 2020 assassination that Trump ordered of senior Iranian general Qasem Soleimani: “It may seem like he makes empty threats until he carries out the threat, and then it’s not so empty, and then you’re dead.”

Boehler did not distinguish who Trump had in mind, whether a Hamas military commander or the “People of Gaza” referred to as facing the prospect of “HELL TO PAY.”

Trumpian vicissitudes

Haaretz military analyst Amos Harel on 10 March said of the ongoing ceasefire talks and release of Americans, “Trump is quite frustrated with the fact that this is taking so long” and “the Trump administration took matters into its own hands and decided to push forward through a back channel with Hamas.” Notably, Trump’s “basic instinct would be to reach for a deal and not another war.”

Trump’s ethnic cleansing rhetorical rage related to Gaza is revolting, but so far it remains rhetoric. Ceasefire talks continue on his watch even as he ratchets up talk of a war crime against the Palestinian people in Gaza that has presumably caught the attention of International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan.

More disturbing than Trump’s repeated rhetorical embrace of mass expulsions, however, is his willingness to allow Israel to shut down humanitarian supplies to more than 2 million Palestinians in violation of international law. As Megan K. Stack writes in The New York Times, hunger is “setting in.” She notes, “Israeli officials are essentially starving Gaza as a negotiation tactic.”

The president’s willingness to allow the siege could facilitate ethnic cleansing if he allows it to slide into the horror of starvation. He knows he is helping Netanyahu make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians suffer and yet he’s turning the screws, cruelly hoping to force them out as Republicans cheer and Democrats look on meekly.

Trump does something smart – like bypassing Netanyahu to allow Boehler to negotiate directly with Hamas – and then covers it over with a bigoted and violent outburst. The problem is that no one knows when the outburst may become policy as Boehler reminds with the Soleimani assassination. Alternatively, the tantrum could be intended as intimidation of Palestinians or as a means of buying time with both Israeli officials and the Israel lobby.

Anti-Arab racism

Boehler’s newfound willingness to negotiate with Hamas at the behest of the president should not obscure the profound anti-Arab bias he brings to the job.

Jared Kushner, who last year spoke dismissively of Palestinians in Gaza – “move the people out” and perhaps Israel will allow them back – when he referred to the “waterfront property” there as “very valuable,” was once a summer college roommate of Boehler’s. Trump’s envoy is similarly dismissive of Arabs, finding humor last year in a since deleted tweet from Eli David, an entrepreneur and artificial intelligence researcher, about Israel’s September exploding pager operation which killed and wounded Lebanese bystanders, including children.

Boehler termed the walkie talkie attack that followed as “badass.”

It’s cause for the utmost caution. Trump won’t think twice about permitting overwhelming Israeli violence in Gaza if he determines it will advance his deteriorating political interests.

For now, however, Trump’s bark is worse than his bite.

War crimes would certainly result were the president ever to transform his words on ethnic cleansing into deeds. It’s a frightening reality, but Biden’s silent support for Israel’s actions in Gaza has so far proved more deadly for Palestinians than the loud and callous words thrown about by Trump.

That could change at any moment, but for the time being Trump appears to be keeping a lid on an all-out return to genocide in Gaza, preferring instead to slowly squeeze Palestinians through the pressure cooker of forcing helpless parents witness humanitarian supplies dwindle.

Boehler in or out?

Republican infighting in Washington is getting underway over the Trump administration’s independent approach. If Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs is correct, Boehler is now receiving significant Republican pushback – buttressed by right-wing Israeli anger – for sitting down with Hamas officials and his description of his efforts on Sunday news shows. Jacobs writes that Republican sources say that “the administration has pulled him off of the Hamas hostage file and opined that he needs to be further sidelined or pushed out of the administration.”

She quotes a Republican senator, who misinterprets Boehler on the “nice guys” comment, as saying: “I’m concerned about anyone who would sit down with Hamas and walk away saying they’re somehow convinced that they’re nice guys now. It is just a very odd comment to make, period.”

Another Republican lawmaker noted, “He’s being sidelined, and that’s good, but I don’t know to what level.”

The lawmaker added, “It was beyond bad, a disaster. I like Adam, but I think he needs to be parked.”

If so, Boehler will experience a fate similar to Andrew Young, President Jimmy Carter’s ambassador to the United Nations. He was pushed out for meeting with an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

For all that the world has changed in its understanding of Israeli apartheid and war crimes, Washington remains stuck in the 1970s.

Yet Haaretz is reporting today that Hamas’ willingness to return American Edan Alexander, who is an Israeli soldier, and the bodies of four dual nationals is a reference to “the proposal floated by US special hostage envoy Adam Boehler during direct talks with Hamas regarding the release of hostages.” Moskowitz himself called the possible return of Alexander “good news.”

If such a deal is reached, Netanyahu and Dermer will be angry as quick success by the Trump administration would call into question the negotiating approach of Israel. Indeed, the office of the prime minister swiftly claimed that Hamas was waging “psychological warfare.”

The Trump administration will have to watch closely to see if Netanyahu reaches for a way to block this deal or defers to the new American administration. Hamas, for its part, presumably is seeking international guarantees that humanitarian supplies will again enter Gaza in sufficient quantities and will continue to do so during a permanent end to the Israeli onslaught.

Barak Ravid in Axios noted that “Hamas’ statement suggests it has agreed to a proposal given to it by Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler last week during the direct talks between the US and the group in Doha.”

Daniel Davis

This comes in the same week that Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, decided she would not name Lt. Col. Daniel Davis to a top position with a role in briefing the president. His thoughts on Israel and Gaza led to pressure to keep him from the job.

Specifically upsetting to supporters of Israel were tweets Davis, a senior fellow at Defense Priorities, made about the “conflict” in Israel and Gaza not beginning on 7 October 2023 and his criticizing “ethnic cleansing” as a possible outcome for Palestinians in Gaza.

“The history of this conflict did not begin” on 7 October, he tweeted in August 2024. In a follow-up tweet, Davis referred to “decades of repression” and asserted that “the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip [have been] effectively incarcerated, with limited or no freedoms, and no path to a future and a hope.”

John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison distinguished service professor of political science at the University of Chicago, co-author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, and a past guest on the Danny Davis Deep Dive on YouTube, told The Electronic Intifada that he was “not surprised to hear that the Israel lobby sabotaged Danny Davis’ appointment, as it has a rich history of going after anyone who criticizes Israel.”

He added, “Still, what happened is disgraceful and profoundly wrong. Here is a man who fought in combat for his country being nixed for a high-level government position by people who are primarily concerned with serving the interests of a foreign country, not the United States.”

Trump’s indecision, unsettling uncertainty

The fight is on in the Trump administration over US policy toward Israel and Gaza. At this juncture, former President Joe Biden and his antiquated ideas on not negotiating with Hamas are struggling to make a comeback, though so far the worst of Biden’s Gaza genocide has not yet returned on Trump’s watch.

Oddly, the pertinent question may turn out to be whether Trump hates Biden or Palestinians more.

If he hates Biden more, he may restrain Netanyahu and permit rebuilding without ethnic cleansing. If he hates Palestinians more, he may just brag that he allowed the devastation of Gaza more thoroughly than the former president.

Contemplating what rage or fit of pique will seize Trump on any given day is an unsettling place to be.

More than 50 days have passed without the worst of the Biden genocide being embraced by the new administration. But the fear and anxiety are palpable as a Palestinian student organizer in the United States is targeted, Trump employs “Palestinian” as a slur against Senator Chuck Schumer, and the situation in Gaza deteriorates as a consequence of the Israeli-imposed humanitarian siege that has generated not a word of criticism from Trump.

Will Trump secure a limited peace, as Biden could not, or decide he’d rather be a tough guy (and war criminal) and seek to drive Palestinians out of Gaza? And if he limits the horror in Gaza, will he give Netanyahu a favorable nod on West Bank colonization?

My responsibility is to analyze where Trump is taking things. I don’t know because of his mixed signals.

But the feeling in my gut is that he’s moving toward greater horrors in Gaza that he will compound by permitting Israeli settlers to annex all or most of the occupied West Bank.

His words are frequently dangerous, creating space for the most extreme politicians in Israel and the US to press a maximalist vision that would throw Palestinians in Gaza into Egypt and Palestinians in the West Bank into isolated bantustans.

Trump’s actions are still not nearly as bad as his words, but with time he may well get there.

If sense prevails, however, the transactional president may well strike a deal with Hamas leaders and decide further negotiations are the preferable route. For all the fury Trump voices, that does remain a possible outcome.

Trump’s decrees can change one’s understanding from hour to hour. It’s intentional and discombobulating. Terrifying as threatening words can be, it remains vital with Trump to be on guard but to watch the actions rather than be mesmerized by the brutal rhetoric.

Domestically, Trump has followed through on campaign pledges. When it comes to war, during his first term he largely preferred belligerent invective and assassination to troops on the ground. How much leeway he might give Netanyahu is uncertain, especially if he still aims to expand the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia – pursuing apartheid for Palestinians via diplomacy rather than war or simply permitting Israel to declare sovereignty.

Tomorrow may bring new insight – hope or horror.

Tags

• Adam Boehler
• Donald Trump
• CNN
• Jake Tapper
• Barak Ravid
• Axios
• Ron Dermer
• Khalil al-Hayya
• Marco Rubio
• The Hill
• Benjamin Netanyahu
• Joe Biden
• Fox News
• Qasem Soleimani
• Haaretz
• Amos Harel
• Gaza ethnic cleansing
• Gaza genocide
• Jared Kushner
• Daniel Davis
• Defense Priorities
• Tulsi Gabbard
• John Mearsheimer
• Abraham Accords
• Karim Khan
• International Criminal Court
• Steve Witkoff
• Megan K. Stack
• The New York Times

• Michael F. Brown's blog

• Facebook
• Twitter

• Donate Now