Qatar PM: Going After Hamas Senior Leaders Doesn’t Mean Killing 70 Other People

BAIER: “You were very optimistic about how close a deal between Israel and Hamas on the hostages and possibly ending the war in Gaza was going to be, January 2024. And now it’s not. You know, Hamas released the last living U.S. hostage from Gaza, still holds the bodies of four slain American Israelis taken during the assault on October 7th, and there are others. Where do you think that stands? And I heard what you said about the humanitarian effort. Do you put the onus on Hamas for still holding those hostages and also, you know, keeping people in harm’s way?”
AL-THANI: “It’s good that you have mentioned the case of Edan Alexander, whom we are happily seeing him free finally. This took us, like, long, you know, a lot of time and a lot of efforts and a lot of pressure, without any exchange, which is basically something has never happened. Now, we wanted this to be also as a first step towards having a complete hostage deal. Unfortunately, the next day being followed by a massacre on a hospital in Gaza.”
BAIER: “Israelis obviously said they were going after senior Hamas leadership.”
AL-THANI: “Yeah, but going after senior Hamas leader doesn’t mean killing 70 people just as a collateral damage, which has just been the justification for the last year and a half. We cannot reach a deal when we have two different — like, a fundamental difference between the two parties. One party wants just to retrieve the hostage and continue the war, and the other party wants to end the war and doesn’t think about the hostages.”
BAIER: “I will just say the Israelis obviously say that Hamas uses human shields around their senior leadership, and that’s why all these people are killed.”