The United States recently conveyed principles to Hamas, intended to shape the continuation of negotiations for a comprehensive agreement, through the mediation of Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin. Baskin was previously involved in the contacts between Israel and Hamas that led to the release of soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. The report was revealed Sunday morning by Kan Reshet Bet radio.
Baskin, 69, is an American-born peace activist who currently heads the Middle East department of "International Communities Organization," a British NGO that works in conflict zones with failed peace processes. He began his path as a youth in the Young Judaea Zionist movement and in anti-Vietnam War activism. In the 1980s, he founded a state committee in the Education Ministry to examine coexistence and democracy education in Israel, as well as an institute for Jewish-Arab coexistence education. After the outbreak of the First Intifada, he established the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, which promoted the two-state solution.
Baskin spent more than five years working to bring Gilad Shalit home, beginning the very week Shalit was kidnapped in 2006, after receiving a call from a university lecturer in Gaza with close ties to Hamas. In July 2011, he produced the breakthrough in negotiations between Israel and Hamas for Shalit's release. He passed to David Meidan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's envoy, a document he had received from Ghazi Hamad, Hamas' deputy foreign minister, titled "Final Offer to Close the Deal." Three months later, after long talks with both Meidan and Hamad, Shalit was released.
Baskin's contacts with Hamas continued for years. In 2012, he led talks on a cease-fire arrangement between Hamas and Israel, which included a mechanism to prevent targeted killings of Hamas leaders in exchange for halting terrorist attacks by the group. In 2014, he attempted to negotiate the return of the bodies of fallen soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, as well as the release of Israeli civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. Since the October 7 massacre, Baskin has been in touch with Qatar and Egypt in efforts to secure the release of the hostages.
His ties with Ghazi Hamad, his main interlocutor in Hamas who managed to flee Gaza, were severed at the start of the war. After Hamad openly justified the massacre, Baskin declared that Hamas had forfeited its right to exist. Now, as revealed, Baskin has returned to the negotiating table—this time as the Americans' chosen mediator.
