Gershon Baskin shares about the status of the negotiations between Israel and the Hamas

Wolf Isaac Blitzer

Gershon Baskin shares with Wolf Isaac Blitzer, anchor at CNN, about the status of the negotiations between Israel and the Hamas.
Gershon provides his assessments about the various tracks of negotiation, including the tracks of Qatar, Egypt and the USA.

BLITZER: The efforts to -free the hostages held by Hamas, that effort continues. Israel believes more than 240 people are being held captive in Gaza. Right now, at least 33 of those kidnapped, I believe to be children.

I’m joined now by Gershon Baskin. He is the Middle East director of the international community’s organization. He has extensive experience negotiating the release of hostages. In 2011, he instigated the peace negotiations with Hamas that resulted in the release of that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Gershon, thanks so much for joining us. I know you’ve been working as an unofficial negotiator to try to help release some of these hostages being held by Hamas.

First of all, Gershon, what can you tell us about the status of any talks you have had recently with Hamas.

GERSHON BASKIN, UNOFFICIAL ISRAELI NEGOTIATOR: I can tell you what I — what I assess is happening, because I have little in real information from any of the parties at this time. They’ve basically gone radio silent over the last days, which is usually an indication that something serious is happening.

My assessment is that the track that is being run in Qatar is not moving forward, as expected. That it seems from what I’m able to assess that the political leadership in Hamas is somewhat disconnected to what’s going on under the ground in Gaza.

And I understand that there is a much better chance through the Egyptian channel. But today, you also learn there might be another third track going on, which I can’t give details about, which the Americans are actually indirectly involved in if started. So, these are very intensive talks. The time is running out clearly. The moment that the Israeli army enters the tunnels, the hostages are at in harm’s way as the Israeli soldiers advance inside the massive tunnel network. On the other side of the hostages, of course, are the Hamas fighters.

BLITZER: I have heard it — tell me if this is true or not, that, that third track might actually be Turkey, which apparently has some contacts with Hamas. I know the Secretary of State Antony Blinken, after he wraps up his talks in Amman, Jordan, with the Arab foreign ministers. He’s going to be heading to Turkey, which is a NATO ally, as all of us, of course, know.

Is Turkey involved in trying to get these hostages out?

BASKIN: I know early on — already a month ago, the Turks were wanting the first approach. There are good relations between the Israeli intelligence and the Turkish intelligence. To the best of my knowledge that has not been one of the major tracks. And it’s not the one that I heard about today that I haven’t received confirmation on. But I heard, if it is happening, it might be the one that can make this happen.

Of course, we don’t know if they’re talking about the deal that Hamas has proposed of all, for all, all of the hostages, for all of the prisoners in Israel, which is an almost impossible deal for Israel to accept, or whether or not they’re working on the humanitarian release of infants, children, women, elderly, sick, and wounded.

That’s a much more limited release. But that’s the one that Hamas should be making immediately, without any question, because it’s against the Quran. It’s against their own beliefs to attack women and children and elderly people. It’s against the Quran to even hold them as hostages.

BLITZER: As someone who has worked in these back channels, Gershon to try to get Hamas to release Israelis. And I know you’ve got a lot of experience in dealing with them. Are you upbeat? Are you optimistic or pessimistic that those more than 240 hostages taken out of Israel into Gaza on October 7th will be released?

[12:15:06]

BASKIN: To be truly honest, I think about the worst and hope for the best. I think it is a moral responsibility of the government of Israel to bring these hostages home, because Israel failed to protect them. I think that the government of Israel at the end of the day will be willing to pay a very high price to bring them home.

But we have a problem in Israel, because currently we have a very weakened prime minister, and a government of ministers who do not necessarily support any deal with Hamas of any kind.

The only way to bring all the hostages home will be through an agreement with Hamas. There is no way to rescue them all. We might be able to rescue some of them. But surely, many of them will not be rescued in military operations.

So, we have to pursue and exhaust every possibility of any kind of agreement with Hamas, even though we know that the final goal of Israel in this war is to dismantle Hamas’ ability to govern and to threaten Israel ever again.

BLITZER: Gershon Baskin, thank you so much for joining us.

BASKIN: Thank you, Wolf.

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Wolf Blitzer

Wolf Blitzer is anchor of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, which airs weekdays at 6pmET and provides viewers with in-depth reports about the political, international and breaking news stories of the day. Blitzer has been with CNN for 33 years. One-on-one interviews with prominent figures who are shaping news on the world stage has been a hallmark of Blitzer and The Situation Room throughout the entire 18 year on-air run – one of the longest running CNN shows. Blitzer recently spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the midst of ongoing protests over a law that passed limiting the ability of Israel’s highest court to check the government’s power. He also sat down exclusively with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Vilnius, Lithuania during the 2023 NATO Summit and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as Americans continued to feel the effects of post-pandemic inflation. 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Viewers followed Blitzer as he toured the museum and reflected on the history of the Holocaust, his family’s place in that history, and his role as the child of survivors to carry on their legacy of Holocaust education. Blitzer began his career in 1972 with the Reuters News Agency in Tel Aviv. Shortly thereafter, he became a Washington, D.C., correspondent for The Jerusalem Post and reported from the nation’s capital for more than 15 years. Blitzer has been with CNN for over 30 years having joined in 1990 as the network’s military-affairs correspondent at the Pentagon. He then served as CNN’s senior White House correspondent covering President Bill Clinton from November 1992 election until 1999, when he became the anchor of CNN’s Sunday public affairs program Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and remained for more than a decade. Over the decades, Blitzer has reported on a wide range of major breaking stories around the world that have shaped the international political landscape. In 1982, Blitzer was in Beirut during the withdrawal of PLO and Syrian forces. Blitzer covered the first Israeli-Egyptian peace conference in Egypt in 1977, and, in 1979, he traveled with then-President Jimmy Carter on visits to Egypt and Israel for the final round of negotiations that resulted in the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. He was among the first Western reporters invited into KGB headquarters for a rare inside look into the Soviet intelligence apparatus; he returned to Moscow in December 1991 to cover the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition from Mikhail Gorbachev to Boris Yeltsin. Throughout his career, Blitzer has interviewed some of history’s most notable figures, including U.S. Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. 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