Israeli peace negotiator Gershon Baskin said Hamas would have stopped war and released the hostages at the beginning and warned strikes would endanger them
One of Israel’s key hostage negotiators has revealed Hamas would have released its hostages in three weeks if the Israeli Defence Forces had withdrawn from Gaza.
Peace campaigner Gershon Baskin had direct talks with Hamas on stopping the war within days of the attacks of October 7, 2023. He said a key Hamas figure told him: “We’re ready to give [the hostages] back,” in return for IDF withdrawal and the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. And the IDF told him they could have been out of the Gaza Strip within three weeks.
But the three-week deal fell through when Israeli troops surrounded the city of Gaza and Hamas froze talk of a prisoner exchange. Gershon claims Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants troops to remain in Gaza to please his right-wing supporters.
Because of this, he says just one man can stop the war – US President Donald Trump. He said: “Only one person can make Netanyahu do what he doesn’t want to do.”
As the death toll in Gaza passes 60,000, there are rising fears of famine in the Strip.
‘Genocide’
Gershon told the Mirror: “It is a genocide.
“There’s a difference between the Holocaust and what’s going on in Gaza. But there is a legal definition of what genocide is, and it’s the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide. It was written first in 1948. Many Jews participated in the drafting of that document.
“Israel has erased a civilization in Gaza. We have turned Gaza into an unliveable place. It’s not just the number of people who are killed.
“It’s the fact that we have destroyed everything. Two million people who are homeless, no public institutions, no libraries, no mosques, no public buildings, no water infrastructure, electric infrastructure, no schools, no universities.
“That’s the erasure of a civilization. And that is the definition of genocide. It pains me to say the country of the Jewish people is committing genocide in Gaza.”
The US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is in Gaza to visit one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) distribution sites in Rafah, southern Gaza. All sites are in zones controlled by the Israeli military and have become flashpoints of desperation. Hundreds have been killed by gunfire or trampling.
The Israeli military says it has only fired warning shots, and GHF says its armed contractors have used pepper spray or warning shots. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Witkoff was sent to craft a plan to boost food and aid deliveries, while Trump said the fastest way to end the crisis would be for Hamas to surrender.
Officials at Nasser Hospital said they have received the bodies of 25 people, including 13 who were killed while trying to get aid, including near the site that US officials visited. GHF denied anyone was killed at their sites on Friday.
Gershon knew his life’s work would be negotiating peace after his Israeli-born wife’s cousin Sasson Nuriel, a 51 year-old Israeli businessman, was kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in 2005. As he wept at Sasson’s funeral, Gershon felt useless.
He recalled: “I was standing with the family over his grave and crying like everyone else and I felt so bad because I had been working with Palestinians for more than two decades. I swore to myself that if ever again someone would ask me for help, I would do everything humanly possible.”
The following year, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped and dragged into Gaza, where he remained imprisoned for five years. Gershon worked tirelessly to help free him, succeeding after five years.
Since October 7, 2023, he has repeatedly tried to help in easing the pain of Gazans and Israelis by trying to persuade Israel to end the war. He does not believe civilians are deliberately targeted in Gaza, but he admits Israel’s military is not accepting responsibility.
Gershon said: “They’re not being deliberately targeted, but there’s no moral sense of responsibility for what they call collateral damage. I talked to soldiers who have come back from Gaza and the kind of picture they describe is I think very much a self-justification for the horrors that they are doing.
“I say: ‘Do you really need to bulldoze every building, every house? Do you need to have it bombed? Is it really necessary to wipe it out, to destroy whole communities?’, and they say every building can be booby trapped.
“That’s at the level of soldiers. I’m not talking about the officers, who are implementing a policy set by the Israeli government of making Gaza unliveable.”
Three days after the Gaza war broke out, Gershon called Razi Hamed, a senior member of Hamas. He said: “I contacted him when I heard his house was bombed. I said: ‘I wanted to see if you’re alive.’
“Then I said: ‘It’s not logical to me that you guys are going to hold women and children and elderly and sick and wounded hostages.’ And he said: ‘Yeah, we’re ready to give them back.’”
Hamed wanted the release of close to 100 women and minor prisoners held in Israeli jails, mostly from the West Bank. This prompted many conversations with Hamas, even as official negotiations for peace were taking place between Israel and the militant group in Qatar and Egypt.
Now Gershon says: “This was at the beginning of the war, the first time I came out and said the military pressure is going to kill hostages.”
Of the 251 captives taken on October 7, 140 living hostages have been released, along with eight bodies. Israeli troops have rescued eight and recovered 49 bodies.
Along with four hostages who were taken by Hamas before the current war, there are believed to be 50 left – no more than 20 of them still alive. Gershon said: “Some of those hostages look like they came out of concentration camps and they’re treated really badly. They don’t have fresh water. They don’t have fresh food.”
Asked about the likelihood of any of them making it home safely, he said: “It’s completely dependent on one person – on Donald Trump.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has threatened Israel that the UK will recognise Palestine as a state unless Netanyahu moves towards peace – a move criticised by some relatives of British hostages.
But Mr Baskin believes this was unnecessary. He added: “Netanyahu is not going to do anything because Starmer is threatening him.”
