US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is in the spotlight as the first phase of the hostage deal began this week.
The first three hostages were released on January 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration. Witkoff spoke at a Trump victory rally on January 19, saying he had received news of the hostage release on his phone soon before he took to the stage. “We had a great team, but it doesn’t happen without Donald Trump…The president was responsible for this release, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude, as to all the families,” he said.
Witkoff was tapped back in mid-November by Trump. The New York Post called him a longtime friend of the president and a “fellow real estate developer.”
Trump at the time wrote that “Steve is a Highly Respected Leader in Business and Philanthropy, who has made every project and community he has been involved with stronger and more prosperous. Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”
The envoy avoided the spotlight until early January when the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming administration was able to bring together mediators in Doha to try to finalize a deal that had been in the works for a year. In fact many parts of the deal had not changed, but there was apparently a need to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into accepting the terms.
‘A deal needed to happen’
According to numerous reports Witkoff made it clear a deal needed to happen. “Steve Witkoff delivers ‘stark message’ from Trump to Netanyahu, prompting PM to instruct Israeli negotiation team to head to Qatar and strike agreement; envoy reportedly said Trump ‘has been a great friend of Israel and now it’s time to be a friend back,” Ynet wrote.
This approach has now been called the “Witkoff strategy” by Al-Ain media in the UAE. Clearly the region is watching this development closely. The region knows that the Biden administration failed to get a deal. They know Trump is more serious and many countries are willing to be flexible when they hear that Trump wants something. It’s something about how countries see the US president as being willing to back up words with actions. It’s a mixture of respect, and perhaps a bit of fear of repercussions.
“People who know Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, were not surprised to hear that an aggressive meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced the latter to sign a deal that included a ceasefire and the return of hostages,” a report noted at Al-Ain media. “He’s a smart guy and a talented negotiator,” a person close to Witkoff said, according to the Gulf media.
The way that the Trump administration, which took office on January 20, has been able to do this deal and bring a ceasefire to fifteen months of war is going to reverberate across the region. The war was massively destructive and set in motion a regional war. That means that the October 7 attack led Iraqi militias to carry out more than 100 attacks in Syria and Iraq, targeting US troops. The militias also targeted US troops in Jordan.
The war also set in motion the Houthi attacks on ships. In addition it led to a war in Lebanon and that likely led to the fall of the Assad regime. The October 7 war has re-shaped the region. The US often reacted to these events but didn’t drive them forward.
The Trump administration has come into office trying to bookend this war in Gaza and potentially also push the ceasefire forward in Lebanon. The first sixty days of that ceasefire ends in late January. The administration will have a lot of work to do. However, the key aspect here is that the region is already seeing progress and it is seeing things happen that many countries were waiting for.
The fact is that Trump and his envoy Witkoff as well as other members of the incoming administration are now going to be taken seriously. When they say they want to see the ceasefire continue, they will be listened to. That will continue until the administration faces a crisis that it may not be able to handle.
For now, however, many countries are watching and many of them are happy with what they see. They wanted the war in Gaza to end. However, some countries are going to be concerned to see Hamas popularity grow. Many countries don’t want Hamas to grow too powerful, they know the disasters it has caused.
Therefore there will also be questions for how much of the Gaza ceasefire will empower Hamas. Israel’s inability to defeat Hamas in fifteen month may cause concern among Israel’s peace partners in the region. Israel had tried to restore deterrence after October 7, however the ceasefire deal may erode that deterrence again.
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