GERSHON BASKIN, MIDDLE EAST DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITIES ORGANIZATION, NEGOTIATED RELEASE OF HAMAS HOSTAGE IN 2011 (via Skype): So you’re essentially negotiating with people that you intend to kill, which makes it a very difficult negotiation.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: What about any potential role of China? This week we’re going to see China host several Arab and Muslim- majority nations in terms of the leaders in Hong Kong. We know that China’s top diplomat has called for, in their words, urgent action to end the conflict in Gaza.
Does China have sway here in terms of the hostage negotiations?
BASKIN: I’m not sure they have sway in terms of the hostages but I think that China has a major role to play in the post-war scenario of the need to rebuild Gaza under the framework of an international understanding that Israel’s occupation over the Palestinian people will end and the two-state solution will be forced on Israel and Palestine.
I would be very happy to see China and the United States leading the international effort to rebuild Gaza together. No one builds infrastructure faster and more efficiently and probably cheaper than the Chinese do, and it might even help improve America-China relations at the same time.
ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Speaking of relations, there was a really fascinating piece in The New York Times over the weekend about your relationship with Ghazi Hamad. You two — a senior Hamas official in Gaza. This had been your connection, right, in term — and that relationship, after October 7, is essentially if not on pause finished at this — at this point.
Can you just enlighten us as to what happened in that relationship, and is this a sign of what it could mean on a broader level for relations in the region?
BASKIN: Well, I wouldn’t take it that far to relations in the region.
But Ghazi Hamad and I have been negotiating for 17 years. We negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit and 1,027 prisoners. We successfully negotiated two ceasefires. We’ve spent the last eight years trying to negotiate a deal that would release two Israeli soldiers — armies that were killed in 2014 — and two Israeli civilians who were held by Hamas since 2014. We were not successful there.
I tried to get him to spend a few days with me either in Norway and Switzerland where we would brainstorm together. That never happened. In the last month, I was pushing him to meet me for a few days in Cairo.
But what happened during this war as I was trying to advance a deal on the release of women, children, and elderly hostages in exchange for women and prisoners under the age of 18 in Israeli jails, in transferring messages back and forth it became apparent to me that he was out of the circle of decisionmakers being in Beirut and not connected to Gaza anymore.
And then he went on air on Lebanese television in which he justified the terrorist actions of Hamas inside of Israel and said that we would do October 7 again, and again, and again a million times and that Israel needed to be annihilated.
At that point, it was just too far. And the Ghazi Hamad that I’ve known for 18 — 17 years is not the same Ghazi Hamad who is serving as the spokesperson for Hamas in this war.
HARLOW: It is a fascinating read. Thank for you that, Gershon Baskin. We appreciate you joining us.
BASKIN: Thank you.
