Israeli officials said on Thursday that there has been some progress in the talks to bring about a hostage release taking place in Doha. U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff proposed a limited release of three to five live hostages and three to five bodies of hostages in exchange for a 50-day truce to be used for further negotiations.
U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy left Qatar for Moscow to discuss a cease-fire in the war with Ukraine but left his team behind to continue the negotiations.
The officials who spoke with Witkoff said his commitment to the release of the hostages is deep and comes from "a mystical place, a Jewish place." They said Witkoff has the absolute support from the president, who trusts him to make decisions. "His heart is in it and he will do everything to bring the hostages back."
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Steve Witkoff, Benjamin Netanyahu, Khalil al-Hayya,
(Photo: Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters, Yariv Katz)
President Trump talks about hostage negotiations in the Oval Office on Wednesday
(Reuters)
They said the envoy wants a larger deal and to see all of the hostages home, as does Trump. According to the officials, the president was told which of the hostages was alive, adding that the Americans were unenthusiastic about small releases. If Trump agrees to them, they said, it would be because Israel refuses to move to phase two of the deal signed in January and the insistence of Hamas to end the war while refusing the notion of exile for its leaders. According to one official familiar with the details, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government is the reason for limited releases and a selection process of which hostages should be freed.
Implementing phase two of the deal is critical for the grand American plan to reshape world order. According to the plan, Trump is expected to visit Saudi Arabia in May to advance normalization and expand the Abraham Accords to include more Arab and Muslim nations.
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The sky is the limit in the eyes of the Trump administration who are discussing the addition of Lebanon and Syria to the accords. If the White House sees Netanyahu as a stumbling block in their plan, we would inevitably see Trump and Witkoff inform the prime minister, "it is over."
But for now, the Americans understand Netanyahu's political predicaments and know that agreeing to move to phase two of the deal would rock the foundations of his coalition and might result in early elections in Israel. Such an event would delay the plans for Saudi Arabia.
While Witkoff may agree to limited releases in exchange for further weeks of the cease-fire, separate and apart from phase two, Netanyahu's problems with his far-right coalition partner, Bezalel Smotrich, are already exasperated after his promise that there would be no lull in the war without the release of hostages, has already been broken.