US charges Hamas leaders over October 7, Gaza mediation role under question

The United States Justice Department has announced criminal charges against top leaders of Hamas over their roles in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel in what some see as a largely symbolic move against the Palestinian organisation.

Six defendants, three of whom are deceased, were named in the complaint unsealed on Tuesday.

The deceased defendants are former Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, who was assassinated in July in Tehran; Mohammed Deif, who was killed in an Israel air strike on Gaza in July; and Marwan Issa, whom Israel said it killed in an attack in March.

The living defendants are Hamas’s new leader Yahya Sinwar, who is believed to be in Gaza; Khaled Meshaal, who is based in Doha and heads the group’s diaspora office; and Ali Baraka, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon.

“Those defendants – armed with weapons, political support, and funding from the Government of Iran, and support from (Hezbollah) – have led Hamas’s efforts to destroy the State of Israel and murder civilians in support of that aim,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

The US charges come as the White House says it is developing a new ceasefire and captive deal proposal with its Egyptian and Qatari counterparts to try to bring an end to fighting in Gaza.

Rami Khouri, a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut, told Al Jazeera that the US decision to charge the Hamas leaders hurts its role as a mediator in the ongoing ceasefire talks.

“The United States has been heavily, enthusiastically and vigorously supporting Israel in its current actions in Gaza – in what the UN calls a plausible genocide. And it has long opposed groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, designating them as terrorist groups,” Khouri told Al Jazeera from the US city of Boston.

The move to charge the Palestinian group also shows “the United States is very keen to hold Hamas responsible for its actions but has no similar desire to hold Israel accountable for its actions,” Khouri said.

“And, therefore, in the eyes of most of the world, the United States is not an honest broker, but is complicit in the Israeli genocide” in Gaza, he added.

US prosecutors said they brought charges against the six men in February, but kept the complaint under seal in hopes of capturing Haniyeh, the Reuters news agency said, attributing that information to a Justice Department official.