Face to Face After 'Losing Children'.. An Uncommon Meeting Between Witkoff and Al-Hayya

SadaNews: The U.S. Special Envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, spoke about a rare moment of communication he had with Khalil Al-Hayya, a leader in Hamas, regarding their shared experience of "losing a son."

Witkoff met Al-Hayya in Egypt earlier this October during negotiations to end the Gaza war, in an unusual face-to-face meeting between an American official and a member of Hamas.

In an interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes," Witkoff said that when he entered the room to attend the meeting with the Hamas delegation, he found himself sitting directly next to Al-Hayya.

The American envoy continued: "We expressed our condolences to him for the loss of his son, and I told him that I lost a son, and that we were members of a very harsh club: fathers who buried their sons."

Hammam, the son of Khalil Al-Hayya, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on the residence of the movement's leaders in Doha on September 9, which did not result in the killing of any of the prominent Hamas members who were targeted.

Meanwhile, Andrew Witkoff, the son of the U.S. negotiator, died at the age of 22 from an opioid overdose.

During the interview on the American channel, Witkoff expressed his feeling of "betrayal" when Israel carried out a strike against Hamas negotiators in Qatar last month.

He stated: "I think that Jared Kushner (Trump's son-in-law) and I felt a bit of betrayal."

The Israeli strike on Doha led to the halt of the indirect negotiation process aimed at ending the devastating war in Gaza.

Witkoff added: "This had a significant impact because the Qataris were a key party in the negotiations, as were the Egyptians and Turks. We lost the trust of the Qataris. Thus, Hamas disappeared and it became very difficult to reach them."

At that time, Trump wrote on social media that the decision to carry out the airstrike on Doha was made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Under pressure from Trump during his visit to the White House last month, Netanyahu called the Qatari Prime Minister to apologize for the attack.