When President Biden announced a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, he made a point to thank his negotiating team, which included Amos Hochstein.
Hochstein is an adviser to Biden, a long-time diplomat and an energy security specialist, who worked to mediate an energy conflict between Israel and Hezbollah under the Obama administration. So, when the war in Gaza began and eventually trickled down into Lebanon, he was asked to take on the role as U.S. special envoy to the region.
Hochstein went on to help negotiate the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, which took effect Nov. 27, 2024. He says it influenced the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
"The real game changer was the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah," Hochstein said. "When Hezbollah did the deal, it meant a few things. Suddenly, Israel was fighting a one front war, not a two front war, and that was very bad for Hamas. The second was the sense of betrayal. Hezbollah betrayed them. Iran betrayed them. They signed a deal without them. And so, suddenly, the whole world changed on them."
He also attributes the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal to the pressure of Biden and incoming President-elect Donald Trump.
"So, Hamas was suddenly forced to come to the table in a different way than they were before," he said. "And the Israeli government suddenly came under pressure from two presidents, from an outgoing and an incoming. And that was the change dynamic here."
A day after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal was announced, NPR's Michel Martin spoke to Hochstein on Morning Edition. They discussed how the deal, which was approved by the Israeli cabinet two days after its announcement, came together after 15 months of war.
The following excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.
Michel Martin: Can you give us a sense of what these negotiations have been like? I mean, you're an energy specialist, so you've been in negotiations before about lots of things, but there's a difference between negotiating over money or infrastructure and negotiating over people's lives. So many deaths, atrocities, so much mistrust on both sides already. Can you just give us a sense of what it was like?
Hochstein: There's no doubt that corporate negotiations, and these kinds of negotiations, are fundamentally different. The costs are higher. The meaning behind it is emotional. You meet with relatives of hostages who are sitting there for 460 days or so. And you're meeting with people who tell you that my entire family was wiped out in Gaza.
One, as a mediator, a negotiator, as much as you want to — and there's all these protesters in the streets and outside my house and outside the White House and so on — my job is to take that emotion out. You can't negotiate on emotions. The parties have emotions. But as a mediator, if you come in with the emotions, then you're just injecting more uncertainty into it and volatility.
The formula has to be, what is it that each side fundamentally needs? Israel needs to know that October 7th can't happen again, and the Palestinians in Gaza need to know that this conflict ends and there is some hope that they will be allowed to rebuild their lives. And the threat of daily bombardment, at any moment, is gone.
But it's taking that emotion out and eventually saying, 'Look, guys, this is the last moment. You have to take the status quo off the table. And if you don't agree to this deal now, things get worse for both.'
Martin: There are critics of the administration's whole effort in this area saying that the Biden administration has not demanded enough from Israel.
Given that the president-elect is already seen to be very sympathetic to the Netanyahu regime and Israel. Is there any part of that that you think is fair?
Hochstein: The most discouraging part of this job over the last year has been the lack of nuance in both the coverage and the criticism, and criticism is fine and I accept it. I think we've made mistakes, but by and large, we got to where we are today, the ceasefire, because it was methodical.
Will President-elect Trump do it differently? Perhaps. But I think the lessons in the United States that we have to draw from this is we cannot allow ourselves to take conflicts in the Middle East and bring them in [and] turn them into American conflicts. We have to take that step back and say, 'This is a complicated situation.'
Is it possible that it's not, 'One side is guilty, one side is pure?' But rather, 'This is a very messy war, and our job is to try to get to the end of the war and to try to manage it.'
Martin: How did you get involved in this to begin with? And if you don't mind my asking, are you glad that you did? I mean, this has taken, a toll on everybody involved.
Hochstein: My day job is doing energy and infrastructure investment. And because of my energy background, there was a conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that was brewing for years around how to exploit resources offshore? There's an area of water between Israel and Lebanon that was never delineated. So for 40, 50, 60 years, nobody cared. But all of a sudden, those waters became very valuable. And so we had a real threat of conflict.
There have been many mediators trying to mediate that over the last 15 years. I was one of them in the Obama administration. I failed like everybody else. But we suddenly got to a point where it was about to go into a kinetic, hard, hot war where Hezbollah said, 'If we can develop resources in Lebanon, we're going to fire at the Israeli offshore.'
I was asked. [And I thought] 'Hey, it's an energy deal.' Even though it really wasn't. It was about borders. And I was successful in mediating a boundary between Israel and Lebanon in the water.
And so, when October 7th happened, and because Hezbollah joined the war, the president asked me if I would try to manage and contain that situation as everybody was handling Gaza.
At some point I advocated that we should flip the script to get the actual ceasefire deal in Lebanon in order to incentivize the one in Gaza. And because these conflicts are so intertwined, it's hard to say, 'I worked on Lebanon, but not to work on Gaza' or 'The people working in Gaza, not to be influenced by what's happening in Lebanon.' So, all of these sort of fit together.
Am I glad I did? Yes, the fact that we got a ceasefire. Did it take an emotional toll? 100%. And being part of this to try to make this better was worth it.
Treye Green edited the digital piece.
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