U.S. ambassador to Israel makes his final push for release of U.S. hostages from Gaza

JERUSALEM — The U.S. is seeking the release of all seven American hostages held in Gaza in negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jacob J. Lew told NPR on Friday.

“We are going to do everything we can in this round to get all the American hostages, living and dead, out,” Lew said, shortly after meeting with families of American hostages in his official residence in Jerusalem.

Releasing all of the U.S. hostages would be a step further than what Hamas said this week it would be prepared to do in an initial deal. Hamas has named only two U.S. citizens in a group of 34 hostages — about a third of all hostages in Gaza — that the group said it would free in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

A Hamas official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, tells NPR the U.S. had previously asked for the release of all its citizens, and Hamas said that would require a separate deal with separate concessions. He said such a deal was never pursued.

In a wide-ranging interview with NPR a week before the end of his tenure as President Biden’s emissary to Israel, Lew, who served as Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama, called the failure to free all the hostages more than a year after their capture by Hamas-led militants in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, “overwhelmingly” the biggest failure of U.S. diplomacy in the war.

The U.S. had been negotiating the release of a prominent 23-year-old American hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in the weeks before his captors in Gaza killed him and five other hostages last August, Lew said — the first official from either country to publicly confirm Israeli media reports making those claims.

“In the weeks before he was killed, his name was on everyone’s list of who would come out in an early phase,” Lew said. He said both Hamas and Israel played a role in the failure of those talks last summer.

Unlike previous ambassadors who were household names in Israel and appeared regularly in local interviews, Lew has largely kept a low profile in his 15-month tenure, publicly defending Israel’s targeting of Hamas and handling of the Gaza war — while lobbying Israeli officials behind the scenes to take greater care with Palestinian civilians.

But in his last interview with a U.S. media outlet before leaving the post this month, Lew voiced rare public frustration with Israel’s characterization of U.S. involvement in the war, such as the U.S. pausing of some munitions shipments amid a disagreement over Israel’s tactics. “Using a word like ’embargo’ instead of a disagreement about ammunition creates an impression of daylight that’s greater than the difference,” he said.

Below are highlights from NPR’s interview with Lew, edited for length and clarity.

On U.S. efforts to secure the release of all U.S. hostages

We are going to do everything we can in this round to get all the American hostages, living and dead, out… Our goal is to help all the hostages. My heart breaks. Just before sitting with you, I met with the families of the American hostages. Not for the first time. It was the first meeting I had in this house when I got here in November [2023]. And it’s the last meeting I had before I sat down with you. 

No one can feel the pain the way they do, but I think they feel that, from the president of the United States throughout our government, there’s nothing we can do that we wouldn’t do to help them. But we also can’t manufacture possibilities that don’t exist. …

I don’t think there was a moment where if we had said, okay, we’re just going to make a run for the American hostages, that would have been likely to produce good results. …

I asked myself a million times, before Hamas murdered six hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen, you know, what else could we have done? If there was anything else we had in our ability to do, we were not shy to explore options about things that could work.

In the weeks before he was killed, his name was on everyone’s list of who would come out in an early phase. The fact that he was brutally murdered in cold blood, you know, while his name is actively in a discussion on the release of hostages, kind of shows you what we’re dealing with. 

Over the summer, July and up until the hostages were killed in August, Hamas was in a very, very rigid place. … We didn’t ever get to the point where it came together in terms of Hamas having a position that would enable you to have confidence that you knew who was going to come out and what exactly had to be done to get them out.

That’s still today the issue that we’re struggling to get closure on. …There have been many points where Israel has taken a very hard line and you know, one can debate whether some of those hard lines created pressure that helped the negotiations or shifted the responsibility for making resolution possible.

On Israel’s killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip

It’s been a very hard war. The basic facts are often very murky at the moment when there’s a strike or an operation. I think as time goes on for many of the instances that have been broadcast widely, it becomes clear that there was careful targeting. You know, there was good intelligence. And the loss of civilian life was not as great as reported initially.

None of that takes away the tragedy of the loss of civilian lives. But the coverage of the war has kind of blurred the issues in a way that needs to be more clear. When you’re fighting an enemy like Hamas that’s deliberately hiding its munitions and its command and control operations and its military leaders and fighters behind civilians, it takes extraordinary effort to limit civilian casualties. 

I think from the beginning of the war till now, we’ve seen efforts at a level that when we consult with our Israeli counterparts in principle reflects the kinds of considerations that we ourselves apply.

On U.S. diplomatic success in getting more aid into Gaza

When I got here, it [aid] was a trickle. It was close to nothing … We worked with the leaders, particularly in the defense ministry, but in the prime minister’s office, in the key implementing offices, to press for and think through opening Kerem Shalom, which is now the main point of entry in the south for goods into Gaza…

So we took what was a closed system that was impenetrable and through daily engagement, achieved opening up the system. Now, it doesn’t end there. Every day is a struggle. Every time you solve a problem, there’s a new problem. You know, if you bring in commercial trucks, it turns out they’re ending up being controlled largely by either criminal enterprises or Hamas.

On Israel’s chances of normalized relations with Saudi Arabia if it pursues annexation of the occupied West Bank

I think on the question of annexation, it is not the policy of the [Israeli] government here now. I hope it doesn’t become the policy of the government here now. But there will be very difficult choices. There will be strategic choices, like normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, where, frankly, it’s the reason I came here.

I accepted this post in July of 2023, when the goal was to normalize relations and being here could make a difference. That was the pitch that got me to come here. It’s no less important today than it was in July of 2023. It’s no less in the interest of Saudi Arabia, Israel or the United States.

And it can’t coexist with annexation.

I think the interest of Israel, the security interest, is manifestly served by proceeding on the path towards normalization, isolating Iran. Already, at the end of this war, Iran’s axis is weakened. It no longer has Hezbollah as a front line of defense. It no longer has an army fighting as Hamas. It no longer has a safe haven in Syria. … So I think if there were normalization with Saudi Arabia, it undermines the ability to rebuild that. It strengthens Israel’s acceptance with the rest of the Arab world. So I think it’s a priority at the highest level.

Abu Bakr Bashir contributed to this report.