Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, plans to meet with the top negotiator for Hamas in the latest sign that the White House and Hamas are seeking to maintain a direct line of communication.
Two sources with knowledge of Witkoff’s plans, whose names were not given, told The New York Times that the Middle East envoy is preparing to meet with Khalil al-Hayya, the chief negotiator for Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
Representatives for Witkoff, Hamas, and the White House either did not respond or declined to comment.
The U.S. has typically dealt with Hamas through intermediaries, but Witkoff and al-Hayya met in Egypt last month when Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire agreement.
Witkoff said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the two bonded over their shared loss, saying he told al-Hayya, “We were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children.”
Witkoff’s son, Andrew, died of an opioid overdose in 2011; al-Hayya’s son was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Qatar last September.
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