Retired Shin Bet officer reveals he held secret talks with Hamas over release of Gaza hostages

A retired Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) officer told Channel 12 News on Saturday that previous reports about secret negotiations with Hamas over the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza were accurate, revealing that he personally conducted back-channel talks with senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad in late 2024 after receiving approval from the political echelon.

The talks between retired security officer Adi Rotem and Hamad contributed to a process that began in January 2025, under which the Hamas terror group released groups of living hostages as well as the remains of hostages who had been murdered in captivity, in exchange for increased humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip and the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners from Israeli prisons.

Rotem said the process was intended to serve as the first stage of a broader agreement that would have secured the return of all remaining hostages, brought the war to an end and resulted in the complete withdrawal of IDF troops from the Gaza Strip. However, the process failed to advance significantly beyond its initial stages.

During the Channel 12 interview, Rotem said he had suggested approaching Hamad because the Hamas official had been part of the group that negotiated the 2011 release of kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Schalit, who was freed in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners held by Israel.

He said the murders of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov and Carmel Gat by their Hamas captors in August 2024 added urgency to efforts to secure the release of the remaining hostages.

Rotem also said that after Israel and Hamas completed a deal for the release of women and children hostages at the end of 2023, further efforts to secure the release of additional hostages had failed to make progress.

He placed much of the blame on Qatar, which had sought to portray itself as a neutral mediator but, in his assessment, was openly siding with Hamas and supporting its positions. Rotem described Qatar as “a Muslim Brotherhood state” that should not be trusted.

“I understood that if there was an address, he was the right address,” Rotem said. “Ghazi Hamad was somebody known to us from the past… He was sufficiently senior and shrewd, [and] had access to the entire [Hamas] leadership. I was certainly not naive about him, but there was something about him that said it might be possible to have this discussion with him.”

Hamad is known internationally for comments he made in Beirut on Oct. 23, 2023, in which he said the Oct. 7 terror attack would be followed by “a second, a third, a fourth” such attack and described the destruction of Israel as the ultimate objective. At the same time, Hamad has publicly denied that Hamas intended to kill Israeli civilians.

When asked about the extent of political control over the negotiations, Rotem said the political echelon, primarily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “sets the boundaries, within which the negotiating team has to formulate the strategy – the mandate.”

“And then the forward team has to put that into practice,” he continued. “We worked according to the instructions – and if we thought we needed more room for maneuver, we would go to the political echelon, sometimes even within the ongoing rounds of talks, and seek permission for this or that – and it was sometimes given and sometimes not.”

Rotem said establishing trust was one of the objectives of his talks with Hamad.

“One of the first priorities was to create trust, and that does not mean that we are not enemies. We knew, we said, and we talked about [the fact] that we are enemies at a time of war,” he said.

He said he made that position clear to Hamad from the outset, telling him, “We are right now solving the negotiating problem. And we will continue to be bitter enemies a minute before and a minute after.”

Rotem said he kept the small number of officials who were aware of the back-channel informed throughout the process, describing the negotiations as difficult and complex.

He also defended the decision to negotiate directly with Hamas, saying that “talking with the enemy does not mean that you are giving him legitimacy. You are having to negotiate with the terrorist, with the enemy, in order to extricate somebody.”

The military censor approved publication of the story about the secret negotiations this week.