Steve Witkoff, United States Special Envoy to the Middle East, admitted on Sunday that he was “duped” by Hamas terrorists — the Iranian-backed terrorist group that ignited war in the Middle East when they slaughtered 1,200 people and took hundreds hostage during their October 7 terrorist attack.
Witkoff made the stunning admission during an interview on Fox News after weeks of trying to negotiate with the terrorist group despite the group having repeatedly lied to negotiators as they seek to prolong the conflict for as long as possible.
“I thought we had a deal, an acceptable deal,” Witkoff claimed after meeting with Arab leaders in Qatar. “I even thought we had an approval from Hamas. Maybe that’s just me getting duped, but I thought we were there, and evidently we weren’t.”
“So this is on Hamas,” he said. “The United States stands with the State of Israel. There’s just, that’s a 100% commitment and we’ve expressed that. Hamas had every opportunity to demilitarize, to accept the bridging proposal that would have given us a 40 or 50 day ceasefire where we could have discussed demilitarization and a final truce.”
“We need to be clear who the aggressor is here, and that is Hamas,” he added.
Witkoff’s comments come after he made remarks during an interview with Tucker Carlson last week that led to significant backlash online.
Among the most shocking statements he made were that he believed that Hamas could stay in charge of Gaza so long as they were “demilitarized.”
“What’s acceptable to us is they need to demilitarize,” he said. “Then maybe they could stay there a little bit. Be involved politically. But they can’t be involved militarily.”
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Witkoff also claimed that Hamas was not “ideologically locked in” to their belief system, despite tens of thousands of terrorists fighting to their death in Gaza rather than give up the hostages and surrender.
He said that negotiators needed to “figure out what you can give them that allows them to walk out,” thus effectively giving into the demands of a group that carried out one of the deadliest terror attacks in world history.
“I said to [Trump], I don’t think that they are as ideologically locked in,” he said. “They’re not ideologically intractable. I don’t, I never believe that, by the way. I believe they strap on the suicide vests onto young kids who don’t know what they’re doing, right? And they tell them a story. And once you understand that, once you understand that they wanted to live, then you were able to talk to them in a more effective way.”
Carlson praised Witkoff’s thinking as “smart.”
“Smart. Smart. That is totally, that is smart,” Carlson said.
Witkoff added that he believes the conflict could be brought to an end through “dialogue,” despite that not working over the last 18 months.
The post <a href=https://www.dailywire.com/news/witkoff-admits-he-got-duped-by-hamas-after-saying-they-could-stay-politically-in-charge-of-gaza target=_blank >Witkoff Admits He Got ‘Duped’ By Hamas After Saying They Could Stay ‘Politically’ In Charge Of Gaza</a> appeared first on Conservative Angle | Conservative Angle - Conservative News Clearing House
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