Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, is committed to implementing the Gaza ceasefire and getting it to the second phase, he said in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday.
He plans to head to Israel, where he will join an inspection team that will travel to the Netzarim and Philadelphi corridors in Gaza, both areas held by Israel.
“I’m actually going to be going over to Israel. I’m going to be part of an inspection team at the Netzarim corridor and also at the Philadelphia corridor,” Witkoff said, adding that the inspectors will be there to ensure there is safety at the corridors and no one entering those areas is 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 to hold. Witkoff and his team joined the negotiations in Qatar that led to the deal in the last days of the previous Biden administration, and he is widely credited for pushing the deal through.
After being inaugurated, US President Donald Trump on Monday said he wasn’t confident the ceasefire would make it into its second phase.
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Witkoff told Fox News that he did not disagree with the president’s comments but added that he is working to ensure the deal stays on track.
“We have to make sure that the implementation goes well because if it goes well, we’ll get into phase two, and we’re going to get a lot more live bodies out,” Witkoff said.
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“And I think that that is what the president’s directive to me and everybody else working in the American government on this – that’s his directive, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Witkoff said that the Trump administration is focused on reaching a normalisation deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but it hinges on the Gaza ceasefire.
”My own opinion is that a condition precedent to normalisation was a ceasefire. We needed to get people believing again.”
Witkoff said normalisation could have a domino effect over the Middle East, with other countries following Saudi Arabia’s move.
“Normalisation means the beginning of the end of war. It means the entire region becomes investable. It becomes financeable.”
Israel’s war on Gaza has 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 nations have described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”.
The ceasefire deal achieved last week brought temporary relief to the enclave, although Israeli forces still killed 19 Palestinians in the hours after the ceasefire went into effect.
The deal consists of three phases, the first of which is supposed to last six weeks and will see 33 Israeli captives held in Gaza be released, including nine who are ill or wounded.
For its part of the first phase, Israel will release 1,000 Palestinians detained since 8 October 2023 and also partially withdraw from densely populated areas of Gaza, including the Netzarim corridor.
The second phase would free the remaining Israeli captives held in Gaza, and Israel would completely withdraw from Gaza. However, negotiations for the second and third phases of the deal continue, and there is nothing in the current agreement that tackles the issue of who will govern Gaza after the end of the war.
