Inside the Secret Israel-Hamas Negotiations to Release 50 Hostages

Weeks of secret hostage negotiations with Hamas were hanging by a thread when President Biden phoned the emir of Qatar, a key emissary to the militant group, to deliver an urgent message.

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza, had gone dark after the Israeli military seized control of Al-Shifa hospital, a facility Israel said Hamas used as a command-and-control center. Now that the fighting at the hospital was over, Sinwar had re-emerged from the shadows, and he was ready to negotiate.

“This could be our last chance,” Biden told the emir, according to several people with knowledge of the call.

Biden was injecting himself into one of the most complex hostage negotiations in modern history, a diplomatic frenzy that involved the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and Israel’s Mossad, Egyptian intelligence officers and Sinwar, an enigmatic leader that Israeli officials say was operating from an underground bunker.