Hamas offering 5-to-10-year truce with Israel: US official says

Hamas offered to hand over governance of the Gaza Strip in exchange for a five-to-10-year truce in its war with Israel, President Trump’s special envoy for hostage negotiations said on Sunday.

Adam Boehler told Israel Public Broadcasting the U.S.-designated terrorist group offered the truce during direct talks with the U.S. over efforts to free remaining American and Israeli hostages. 

Boehler described the conversations as “baby steps” but said Hamas proposed some “reasonable” and “workable” actions. 

Boehler said the conversations were “not a bad first offer.” 

“They suggested a five-year to 10-year truce, where Hamas would lay down all … weapons, and where the United States would help, as well as other countries, ensure that there’s no tunnels, there’s nothing taken on the military side, and that Hamas is not involved in politics going forward,” Boehler said. 

Boehler said he coordinated with Israel in his talks with Hamas, despite Jerusalem reportedly being caught off guard by the back-channel negotiations with the U.S. 

Boehler said the Trump administration’s efforts to release Americans — at least one living and four believed deceased — would coincide with efforts to release dozens more living Israeli hostages, all kidnapped from southern Israel during Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The president wants every single hostage home, and he wants a peace, a calm in this region, that’s what he wants,” Boehler said. 

The U.S.-Hamas talks broke with past U.S. policy and were outside the terms of a deal authored by former President Biden that went into effect on Jan. 19. 

Under the terms of that deal, the release of additional hostages was supposed to happen alongside so-called Phase 2 talks to end the war. 

Trump in early February proposed the U.S. taking over the Gaza Strip and turning it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East. Trump called for the permanent relocation of the nearly 2 million Palestinians during the reconstruction effort, with no guarantee they could return.

Arab countries proposed an alternative plan, but Trump shut them down, in part over provisions that kept Palestinians in Gaza.