Washington believes that Hamas is being led in Gaza by a council until its hierarchy is re-established after Israeli forces killed Yahya Sinwar, the terror group’s chief in the Strip, on Oct. 16, Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman, said at a Monday press conference.

Qatar, a major U.S. ally, which senior U.S. officials frequently thank for its role in negotiating on behalf of Hamas in ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire and hostage release deal, has long harbored Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s acting leader.

JNS asked why Washington isn’t pressuring Qatar to push Mashaal into a deal, given that the terror leader is a guest in the Gulf state.

Miller cited the prior “tireless efforts” and “intense focus” of Qatari Prime Minister Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to try to seal an agreement.

“They have a channel with Hamas that is productive for trying to reach this agreement,” Miller said. “The fact is it’s Hamas that holds the hostages, and so it’s Hamas with whom they have to negotiate.”

Last month, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges against Mashaal for his role in orchestrating the Oct. 7 attacks.

JNS asked Miller if the State Department believes that Qatar has more leverage, given that Mashaal lives there. The Foggy Bottom spokesman again demurred.

“We have made clear that is an important channel that exists to communicate with Hamas to try to get these hostages home,” Miller said. “There can be no more business as usual with Hamas. But it is important that this channel continues to exist, because we have hostages, including seven American hostages who remain in Gaza, that we want to try to get home.”

JNS also pressed Miller on the Biden administration’s stance on UNRWA, the Palestinian-only, United Nations aid and social-services agency, which has been plagued by scandal in recent months. Some of the agency’s employees participated directly in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack. Israel says that many of the agency’s staff members have ties to Palestinian terror. The United Nations says that is not the case.

The State Department tried to pressure the Israeli government and legislature into killing a pair of bills to cripple UNRWA activities in Israel, but those bills—which make it illegal for UNRWA to operate in Israeli territory and for Israeli officials to coordinate with the U.N. body—passed in the Knesset shortly after Miller’s briefing.

The Biden administration suspended funding for UNRWA in March after allegations, many of which were substantiated by an internal U.N. investigation, that some UNRWA staffers took part in the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Some other countries followed suit but then reversed course after a U.N. report, which critics called a whitewashing, largely absolved UNRWA for its ties to Hamas or downplayed what critics say are systemic issues that allow terror groups to gain influence in the agency.

Before the Biden administration could resume funding, Congress twice suspended the U.N. agency’s funding on a wide, bipartisan basis. At the earliest, U.S. funding of the U.N. body could begin next March.

JNS asked Miller how the State Department can justify its pressure on Israel to continue facilitating UNRWA’s work, given that two branches of the U.S. government suspended funding to the agency this year.

Miller told JNS that the Biden administration would have resumed funding UNRWA after the United Nations closed its internal investigation if Congress hadn’t interceded.

“That doesn’t mean that there aren’t important reforms that UNRWA needs to undertake,” Miller told JNS. “We believe there are.”

But Israel “should supply UNRWA with the information it alleges to hold against UNRWA employees,” Miller said.

Israel has provided UNRWA with a list of some 100 names of agency employees, who Yerushalayim says are tied directly to terror groups. One of those on the list, Mohammad Abu Itiwi, was killed in an Israeli airstrike last week. UNRWA subsequently admitted, based on photographic evidence, that the terrorist led a slaughter of Israeli citizens at a bomb shelter in southern Israel and the kidnapping of 23-year-old Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was later murdered by Hamas.

UNRWA has said that the Jewish state must provide more evidence to tie names to deeds. Miller agreed with the global body.

“I think that’s a fairly obvious thing to do—if they want UNRWA to take action in the way that any organization should take action if any of its employees are involved in a terrorist attack,” Miller said.

(JNS)