Who is the mediator between Hamas and the US administration, Bashara Bahbah?

With reports of setbacks and successes in the White House's efforts to broker a new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas rapidly emerging, a man serving as an unofficial channel between the Trump administration and Hamas has come into sharp focus.

The efforts of Palestinian-American activist and academic Bishara Bahbah, coordinated with Trump's Middle East envoy and close friend Steve Witkoff, directly led to Hamas's release of Idan Alexander, a dual US-Israeli citizen. This was considered a major success, and Trump celebrated the release in a tweet on Truth Social.

Since then, Bahbah has been unofficially tasked with helping secure a broader agreement that would involve the release of additional Hamas prisoners and hostages in exchange for a "temporary" ceasefire, the release of hundreds or thousands of Palestinians, and the entry of food and humanitarian aid into the Strip.

Bishara Bahbah was born in 1958 in East Jerusalem to a Palestinian family that had been displaced after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. His family then moved to the United States in the 1970s, and he studied at Brigham Young University in Utah before beginning his graduate studies at Harvard University.

Bahbah has held several positions, including briefly editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem-based Al-Fajr newspaper. His resume includes a stint at the Middle East Institute at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, years at a subsidiary of the renowned Morgan Stanley bank, and a book titled "Wealth Management in Any Market." He is reported to have participated in multilateral negotiations on arms control and regional security in the Middle East in the 1990s.

While a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1980s, Bahbah commented on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon by calling what Beirut was experiencing a "second Holocaust," noting that his sister in Beirut had disappeared when Israeli forces besieged the city. Bishara Bahbah's published opinions reflect deep Palestinian nationalist convictions.

Regarding Hamas, Bahbah wrote in June 2018 on the Arab America website, "The Palestinians do not want any newly established Palestinian state to be an Islamic state. However, Hamas must be recognized as a political party within the confines of the Palestinian constitution. Reconciliation with Hamas is imperative, and Hamas must be integrated into the Palestine Liberation Organization. Its voice cannot be isolated."

Regarding the Gaza Strip, Bahbah added, "The people of Gaza are Palestinians like any other Palestinian (my maternal grandparents are from Gaza). No one should impose collective punishment on them."

Bahbah has expressed his view on the inevitability of negotiations to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict several times over the past years.

In a February 2021 interview with the Wilson Center think tank about past and future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Bahbah said at the time, "In terms of the format of any future negotiations, I think they should be more interactive." He added, "You don't make policy by reading speeches. You make policy by sitting down together and identifying each other's concerns regarding the issues you're negotiating. Both sides should be clear about what each side hopes to achieve from those negotiations. The more face-to-face the negotiations are, the more effective they will be."

Source: Al Jazeera