Trump Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff said he believes the administration has the opportunity to bring “everyone” in the Middle East on board with the idea of normalization.
Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff believes the long-awaited Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal is one step closer to normalization in the Middle East, and the administration has the opportunity to get “everyone” in the region on board with the idea.
“I think this is an inflection point,” Witkoff said on “America’s Newsroom,” Wednesday.
“I think you could get everybody on board in that region. I think there’s a new sense of leadership over there. Qatar was enormously helpful in this. Sheikh Mohammed, plenty of his communication skills with Hamas were indispensable here, so I think the UAE is already a part of it. Egypt was very helpful to us in these endeavors.”
“I think we have the opportunity to get everybody bought in to a better future for the region – more opportunity, more hope,” he added.
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Witkoff, a former real estate tycoon, is credited for being President Trump’s man in the room during efforts to broker the complex deal that has seen the return of three female hostages thus far.
Additional phases of the deal should see more releases, though President Donald Trump is doubtful the ceasefire will hold as intended.
“I’m not confident. It’s not our war, it’s their war,” Trump said from the Oval Office, when asked by a reporter whether the ceasefire would hold and last through three planned phases. “I looked at a picture of Gaza – Gaza is like a massive demolition site. That place is, it’s really, it’s got to be rebuilt in a different way.”
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Witkoff said he doesn’t disagree with Trump and that the “implementation” of the deal will likely be more challenging than its “execution.”
“That was a big step…. We had to get it done, and we did, thank God, and now we’ve got implement [it],” he added, saying that he will be traveling to Israel to work on the implentation of the ceasefire that will hopefully lead to further hostage releases.
“I’m actually going to be going over to Israel. I’m going to be a part of an inspection team at the Netzarim corridor and also in the Philadelphi corridor. That’s where you have outside overseers making sure that people are safe and people who are entering are not armed and no one has bad motivations, but we have to make sure that the implementation goes well.
“If it goes well, we’ll get into phase two, and we’re going to get a lot more live bodies out, and I think that’s what the president’s directive to me and everybody else working in the American government on this [is], and that’s what we’re going to do.”
