Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy has arrived in Israel after holding talks in Doha in a last-ditch US push for a ceasefire to end the Israel-Hamas war and secure the release of hostages in Gaza before the president-elect’s inauguration.
Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon and close friend of Trump, was set to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday after talks with senior Qatari officials on Friday and liaising with Joe Biden’s administration.
Trump’s election has injected momentum into the ceasefire-and-hostage negotiations. He has repeatedly demanded that all hostages be released before his January 20 inauguration, warning again this week that there would be “all hell to pay” if they were not.
Mediators believe they are edging closer to a deal despite differences on important issues. Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East adviser, was also in Doha, people briefed on the talks said.
“We’re making some real progress,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday, while urging Hamas to accept a deal. “I’m still hopeful that we’ll be able to have a prisoner exchange.”
Despite the tentative optimism, there are still several sticking points. Among them is disagreement over the identity — and condition — of the hostages to be released in the first stage of a multiphase ceasefire proposal, primarily women, wounded and the elderly.
Israel has demanded that Hamas clarify which of the several dozen hostages that fit the criteria are still alive, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.
“The issue of live hostages is the critical issue, this will make or break the deal,” said another person familiar with the talks. “Israel . . . wants to make sure it’s not getting only corpses back.”
The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it had recovered the bodies of two hostages, a Bedouin Israeli father and his son, seized by Hamas during its October 7 2023 attack on southern Israel.
Israeli authorities have said roughly half of the approximately 100 hostages are no longer alive, with other estimates putting the number even lower.
Over weeks of talks, Netanyahu has attempted to “maximise” the number of live hostages set to be released during the deal’s first stage, according to three people familiar with the talks.
Other stumbling blocks have centred on disagreements over the redeployment of Israeli troops inside Gaza during the first phase.
This includes whether Netanyahu will agree to pull back Israel’s forces from a strip of land along the Egypt-Gaza border known as the Philadelphi crossing, which has been a point of contention.
“We are pretty close, but we are not there yet,” said a diplomat briefed on the talks.
An agreement had been thought to be near multiple times last summer, only for Israel and Hamas to backtrack and for the talks to stall.
The current round of negotiations has hewn closely to those efforts, which were based on a multi-stage proposal designed to lead to a permanent ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
However, Netanyahu still insists Israel will not commit to ending the war until Hamas is “destroyed”, and has repeatedly rejected a full withdrawal from Gaza.
While the US puts the onus on Hamas to get an agreement over the line, others say Netanyahu’s willingness to sign up to a deal is also critical. “The big question is what is Netanyahu thinking and what pressure he is facing domestically,” said the diplomat briefed on the talks.
Defence minister Israel Katz has instructed the military to bring him a plan for the complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza. “If the hostage deal is not realised by the time President Trump takes office, Hamas in Gaza must be completely defeated,” he said.
Far-right members of his government have criticised the ceasefire talks. They threatened to leave Netanyahu’s governing alliance if he agreed to what they described as a reckless deal and advocated the building of Israeli settlements in Gaza.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Wednesday that “we shouldn’t have negotiated with Hamas, but I understand it even less when we are days away from getting to the table stronger with Trump in the White House”.
“The Gaza war should end with Hamas not existing any more. We need to stay in Gaza for a very long time,” he said. “We need to stop being afraid of the word ‘occupation’.”
