Trusting Trump: Why Hamas gambled on giving up Gaza hostages

Hamas has called Donald Trump a racist, a "recipe for chaos" and a man with an absurd vision for Gaza. But one extraordinary phone call last month helped persuade Hamas that the US president might be able to hold Israel to a peace deal even if the group surrendered all the hostages that give it leverage in the war in Gaza, two Palestinian officials said. In the call, widely publicised at the time, Trump put Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the phone after a meeting at the White House in September, to apologise to Qatar's prime minister for an Israeli strike on a residential complex that housed Hamas' political leaders in the emirate's capital Doha. Trump's handling of the...