Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, is expected to meet on Wednesday with senior Hamas terrorist Khalil al-Hayya in Turkey, local media said, citing Hamas and Arab officials.
A Hamas official told Saudi Arabia’s Asharq Al-Awsat that the terrorist group would be listening to Washington’s plans to implement Trump’s Gaza deal following the U.N. Security Council’s formal backing of it on Monday, which Hamas has rejected due to the demand that it disarm.
Preparations for the meeting between Witkoff and al-Hayya were first reported by The New York Times on Friday, though that report, which cited people familiar with the plan, did not include a date or location.
Witkoff met with al-Hayya in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in October, together with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as a result of Washington’s push to forge a truce between Israel and Hamas.
An agreement was reportedly cemented in that meeting, after which the ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, with the prompt release of the 20 remaining living hostages and the subsequent return of most bodies.
Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, and direct contact between American officials and terrorists is highly unusual.
Al-Hayya has praised Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border massacre in Israel, describing the deadliest single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust as a “military accomplishment” and a “source of pride.”
Speaking to CBS News‘ “60 Minutes” on Oct. 19, Witkoff recounted meeting al-Hayya in Sharm el-Sheikh, saying that he had offered the terrorist condolences for the loss of his son Himam, who was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Hamas leadership in Doha, Qatar, on Sept. 9.
“I told him that I had lost a son and that we were both members of a really bad club, parents who have buried children,” said Witkoff. Witkoff’s son, Andrew, died of an opioid overdose in 2011.
