A tense meeting held over the weekend between Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and incoming Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff led to significant progress in the hostage negotiations, with Witkoff, a top aide to President-elect Donald Trump, influencing Netanyahu more in one session than outgoing President Joe Biden had managed over the entire year, according to two Arab officials who spoke to The Times of Israel on Tuesday.
Witkoff had been in Doha for the past week participating in the hostage negotiations, with efforts focused on reaching an agreement before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. On Saturday, Witkoff traveled to Israel for a critical meeting with Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Jerusalem office.
During this meeting, Witkoff encouraged Netanyahu to agree to essential compromises needed to move the deal forward, two officials revealed on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment.
By Monday night, two days after the meeting in Jerusalem, the Israeli and Hamas negotiation teams informed mediators that they had accepted the hostage deal in principle, the two Arab officials reported. Since then, both sides have been working on finalizing the details of how the agreement will be implemented.
One major issue still under discussion is the specifics of the Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) planned withdrawal from Gaza. Mediators are awaiting a map from Israel that would outline the details of this pullback, the Arab officials explained.
The two officials speculated that an announcement of the deal could come on Wednesday or Thursday, potentially in the form of a joint statement from the United States, Qatar, and Egypt, who have been mediating between Israel and Hamas.
Earlier on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that Israel had agreed to the deal to free the remaining 98 hostages, although Hamas had not yet agreed to the same terms.
One of the Arab officials mentioned that the three-phase hostage deal currently being finalized between Israel and Hamas closely mirrors the proposal that Israel put forward in May.
“A deal could have been reached much earlier, but both sides led to talks falling apart at various times,” the official remarked.
The official also dismissed repeated claims from the US that Hamas had been the sole obstacle to a ceasefire, arguing that Israel had also blocked progress in talks over the past several months. According to the official, Netanyahu had walked away from the phased proposal he authorized in May, attempting to prioritize the first phase so that Israel could resume military operations in Gaza right afterward. Now, both parties have agreed to re-engage with the phased framework and are doing so simultaneously—arguably for the first time, the official said.
Although the deal includes three stages, the terms for the second phase won’t be negotiated until the first phase is in progress.
The 42-day first phase involves the release of 33 remaining hostages, including women, children, the elderly, and the severely ill, in exchange for approximately 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners. Israel will partially withdraw from Gaza, while facilitating the entry of 600 trucks of humanitarian aid into the Strip each day.
The second phase will see the release of the remaining living hostages and will culminate in a declaration of a permanent end to hostilities. The third phase will involve the return of the bodies of those still held by Hamas.
On the 16th day of the first phase, negotiation teams will begin discussions regarding the terms for the second phase. These talks will also focus on frameworks for the post-war management of Gaza.
The Biden administration had urged Israel to plan for the post-conflict situation in Gaza ahead of time, warning that failing to do so could jeopardize military gains. Netanyahu had largely resisted these calls, arguing that such planning was futile while Hamas remained active and rejecting the US’s preference for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to replace Hamas in Gaza.
Not wanting to delay any further, Blinken unveiled a plan on Tuesday outlining a vision for Gaza’s future, hoping the parties involved would adopt it.
While the Biden administration has provided significant military support to Israel since the war began following Hamas’s October 7 attack, it has faced challenges in influencing Israel’s military strategy and its approach to negotiations.
Biden officials have pointed to their success in convincing Netanyahu to allow aid into Gaza after a siege was imposed around the Strip in the weeks following the Hamas attack. However, the flow of aid was often disrupted throughout the year, with Blinken noting that food insecurity remains a significant issue for Gazans.
In October, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli officials warning that failure to address the humanitarian crisis within 30 days would endanger Israel’s continued access to offensive weapons. Although Israel did not meet many of the demands by the deadline, the US expressed satisfaction with the progress Israel had made on some requests.
Last spring, the US exerted pressure on Israel to avoid a full-scale assault on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where over one million displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
In May, Biden announced a decision to withhold a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs amid fears that Israel would use them in Rafah, potentially causing a high number of civilian casualties.
Biden officials maintain that they succeeded in persuading Israel to adjust its military plans in ways that would mitigate harm to civilians, directing them toward designated humanitarian zones. Although much of Rafah was destroyed in subsequent military action, including the killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and the destruction of smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel has continued, indicating that the symbolic nature of the withholding was more significant than any material change.
A third Arab official, from one of the mediating countries, suggested that domestic political concerns in the US during an election season prevented Biden from applying greater public pressure on Israel.
The official pointed to a meeting between Blinken and Netanyahu in August, after which Blinken announced that Netanyahu had accepted a US proposal for a hostage deal. However, both the Arab official and a member of Israel’s negotiation team told The Times of Israel that Blinken’s remarks misrepresented the outcome of the meeting, which ultimately caused talks to collapse.
Earlier this month, Blinken told The New York Times that Hamas tends to harden its stance at the negotiating table when it perceives discord between the US and Israel. He suggested that Washington refrained from publicly blaming Netanyahu for the lack of an agreement to avoid damaging the negotiations further.
{Matzav.com}