Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, is committed to implementing the Gaza ceasefire and moving it to the second phase, he said in an interview with Fox on Wednesday News.
He plans to travel to Israel, where he will join an inspection team that will travel to the Netzarim and Philadelphia corridors in Gaza, two areas controlled by Israel.
“Actually, I’m going to Israel. I will be part of an inspection team in the Netzarim corridor and also in the Philadelphia corridor,” Witkoff said, adding that the inspectors will be there to ensure safety in the corridors and that no one enters these areas is not armed.
The trip will be Witkoff’s first official visit to the Middle East and comes as the first phase of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel continues. Witkoff and his team participated in the negotiations in Qatar that led to the deal in the waning days of the previous Biden administration, and he is widely credited with bringing the deal to fruition.
After his inauguration, US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he was not sure whether the ceasefire would enter its second phase.
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Witkoff told Fox News he didn’t disagree with the president’s comments, but added he was working to ensure the deal stays on track.
“We need to make sure that the implementation goes well, because if it goes well, we’ll go into phase two and we’ll be extracting a lot more live bodies,” Witkoff said.
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“And I think that’s the president’s directive to me and to everyone who works in the U.S. government on this – that’s his directive, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Witkoff said the Trump administration is focused on reaching a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but that depends on the ceasefire in Gaza.
“My own opinion is that the precondition for normalization was a ceasefire. We had to give people confidence again.
Witkoff said normalization could have a domino effect across the Middle East, with other countries following Saudi Arabia’s move.
“Normalization means the beginning of the end of the war. This means that the entire region becomes investable. It becomes financeable.
Israel’s war on Gaza lasted 15 months, and throughout the conflict, Israeli forces killed at least 47,107 Palestinians, in addition to decimating much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
Experts, human rights advocates and several countries have called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.”
Last week’s ceasefire deal brought temporary relief to the enclave, although Israeli forces still killed 19 Palestinians in the hours after the ceasefire took effect. fire.
The deal includes three phases, the first of which is expected to last six weeks and will see the release of 33 Israeli captives held in Gaza, including nine sick or injured.
Under the first phase, Israel will release 1,000 Palestinians detained since October 8, 2023 and will also partially withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, including the Netzarim corridor.
The second phase would release remaining Israeli prisoners held in Gaza and Israel would completely withdraw from Gaza. However, negotiations for the second and third phases of the deal continue, and nothing in the current deal addresses the question of who will govern Gaza after the war ends.
