This is the Guardian.

Today, how to get a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas from a man who's made one before and knows what it takes. Israel is at the moment consumed by protests and discontent over the fate of more than a hundred Israeli hostages in Gaza.

This country was built on some core values.

Part of them is strictly that the government of Israel will do everything in its power to bring back hostages and soldiers from captivity wherever they are.

For nearly a year now, there's been no deal to free them and to end a war that's killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians.

But even between such vicious enemies, hostage deals are possible.

The Israeli negotiator Gershron Baskin knows that because he's helped to put one together.

That was my mission. That was my job.

I would talk to the devil if that was necessary to bring them home.

For years, he was possibly the only Israeli in regular contact with a senior Hamas leader.

They talked on the phone hundreds of times, met each other,

had deep serious conversations about how these two sides could, if not make peace, at least forge a kind of long-term truce.

Last summer, they were planning another round of peace talks and then Gershons Hamas contact abruptly said he couldn't meet.

And on October 7th Gershon and the world learned why. From the Guardian I'm Michael Safi, today in focus, the negotiator, the story of the Israeli who still talks to Hamas. Gersh on us.

Gershaun, where does your story start?

I guess my story begins when I was a child. I grew up in the United States in a

suburb of New York City as a youngster at the tail end of the 1960s and found myself getting at the age of 12

involved in the anti-Vietnam war movement dragging my parents to drive me to

demonstrations and the civil rights movement and my led in the US Congress the fight against the war in Vietnam.

And I met him as a 12-year-old.

I went door to door with him campaigning on weekends.

And that was very inspiring.

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