A “tense” weekend meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and new Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff led to a breakthrough in hostage negotiations, with US President-elect Donald Trump’s top aide making more to influence the prime minister in a single session than outgoing President Joe Biden has done all year, two Arab officials told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.
Witkoff was in Doha last week to participate in hostage negotiations, as mediators try to reach an agreement before Trump’s inauguration on January 20. On Saturday, Witkoff traveled to Israel for a meeting with Netanyahu at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem.
During the meeting, Witkoff urged Netanyahu to accept key compromises necessary for a deal, two officials told The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity on Monday. Neither Witkoff nor Netanyahu’s office responded to requests for comment.
On Monday evening – two days after the Jerusalem meeting – the Israeli and Hamas negotiating teams informed the mediators that they accepted in principle the proposed hostage deal, the two Arab officials said. Since then, the parties have been working to finalize details regarding the implementation of the agreement.
One of the main issues still to be finalized concerns the exact parameters of the IDF’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, with mediators still awaiting a map from Israel outlining this, Arab officials said.
Both officials speculated that an agreement would be announced Wednesday or Thursday in the form of a joint statement from the United States, Qatar and Egypt, which act as mediators between Israel and Hamas.
Protesters call for the release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, in front of the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, January 14, 2025. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)
Earlier on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed that Israel had accepted the deal to release the remaining 98 hostages, while Hamas had yet to do the same.
One of the Arab officials said the three-phase hostage deal currently being finalized between Israel and Hamas was largely the same as the proposal proposed by Israel last May.
“An agreement could have been reached much earlier, but both sides led negotiations to fail on several occasions,” the Arab official said.
The official rejected repeated U.S. claims that Hamas was the only obstacle to a ceasefire, arguing that Israel had also thwarted talks in recent months. The Arab official said Netanyahu had moved away from the phased proposal he authorized in May, instead trying to prioritize the first phase of that offer so that Israel could resume fighting in Gaza immediately afterward.
Today, the two sides agreed to once again engage in a progressive framework and to do so simultaneously – arguably for the first time, the Arab official said.
Although the agreement has three stages, the terms of the second phase will not be negotiated until the first phase is underway.
Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, right, shakes hands with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf, left, while U.S. Ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis, second from left, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken look on at Lusail Palace, in Doha, Qatar, Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, Pool)
During the first phase of 42 days, 33 of the remaining hostages, women, children, elderly and seriously ill people, will be released in exchange for around 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners. Israel will partially withdraw from Gaza, while helping to facilitate the entry of 600 humanitarian aid trucks into the Strip each day.
The second stage will see the release of the hostages still alive and will end with a declaration of a definitive end to hostilities. The third phase will see the release of bodies still held by Hamas.
On the 16th day of the first phase, the negotiating teams will begin negotiations on the terms of the second phase. These talks will also focus on management frameworks for Gaza after the war.
The Biden administration had pressured Israel to do such planning in advance, arguing that failing to do so or offering a viable alternative to Hamas risked scuttling military gains. Netanyahu has largely resisted, arguing that such planning is futile while Hamas is still operational and also rejecting the U.S. preference for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority to replace the terror group in Gaza.
Unwilling to wait any longer, Blinken delivered a speech Tuesday unveiling a plan for Gaza’s “next day” that he hopes the parties will adopt.
Although the Biden administration has provided significant military support to Israel since the start of the war sparked by the Hamas attack on October 7, it has at times struggled to influence Israel’s continuation of the conflict and its conduct at home. negotiating table.
A woman sits next to her children in a shelter in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, December 29, 2024 (BASHAR TALEB / AFP)
Biden officials point to their success in convincing Netanyahu to authorize aid to Gaza after a siege was imposed around the strip for weeks following the Hamas attack. But the flow of aid has dropped repeatedly over the past year, with Blinken saying all Gaza residents face food insecurity.
In October, Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to their Israeli counterparts warning that failure to implement a series of measures to alleviate the humanitarian crisis within 30 days risked jeopardizing the delivery of offensive weapons to Israel. Israel did not respond to many of the demands listed in the letter by the end of the deadline – shortly after Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Trump – but the United States said it was satisfied progress made by Jerusalem in many areas. requests.
Last spring, the United States strongly urged Israel not to “crush” the southernmost town of Rafah, Gaza, where more than a million displaced Palestinians had taken refuge.
Biden announced in May his decision to hold back a delivery of 2,000-pound bombs over concerns that Israel would use them in Rafah, leading to a high number of civilian casualties in the fighting.
People walk through a flooded area following heavy rains in a camp for displaced people in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on December 30, 2024. (Eyad BABA / AFP)
Biden officials say they successfully convinced Israel to change its military plans to accommodate civilians by directing them to the coastal humanitarian zone, with much of Rafah razed in the ensuing offensive, which notably killed the leader of Hamas and on October 7. mastermind Yahya Sinwar as well as the destruction of smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border. Other deliveries of equally heavy bombs to Israel have taken place, indicating that sending the still-withheld 2,000-pound bombs is more of a symbolic measure.
A third Arab official from one of the mediating countries argued that fears of a domestic political backlash in the midst of an election season prevented Biden from exerting more public pressure on Israel.
He pointed to a meeting Blinken had with Netanyahu in August, following which the secretary of state announced that the Israeli prime minister had accepted a U.S. transition proposal regarding a hostage deal. The Arab official as well as a member of the Israeli negotiating team told The Times of Israel that this was absolutely not what happened at the meeting and that Blinken’s comments threw a major damper on this round of talks, which ultimately failed.
Blinken told the New York Times earlier this month that Hamas tends to harden its positions at the negotiating table when it arises between the United States and Israel, suggesting that Washington has refrained from blaming Netanyahu publicly for the lack of agreement so as not to cause further harm. the talks.
