As President Donald Trump’s Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner head back to Israel this week, they appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday to share behind-the-scenes details on how the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement came to be.
<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-5362842976017675"
crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
Part of the success of the ceasefire deal was convincing Hamas that keeping hostages was more of a liability than a gain and that Israel would not resume the war after the hostages were returned, they told Lesley Stahl.
To do so, Trump gave Kushner and Witkoff permission to speak directly with Hamas, breaking long-standing diplomatic protocol. Kushner and Witkoff met in Egypt with Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ main negotiator. Witkoff told Stahl that he was able to connect with al-Hayya about the deaths of their sons (Witkoff’s from an overdose in 2011 and al-Hayaa’s from Israel’s strike in Qatar last month).
Asked by Stahl whether it was true Israelis and Qataris hugged once the deal was reached, Witkoff said, “Absolutely, and I thought to myself, I wish the world could’ve seen it.”
After the ceasefire deal was settled, Kushner and Witkoff traveled to Gaza, which Kushner said “looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area … and it’s very sad because you think to yourself, they [Palestinians] really have nowhere else to go.”
Both Kushner and Witkoff declined to call the war a genocide after visiting Gaza. “Absolutely not, no,” Witkoff said. “There was a war being fought.”
Kushner said that “the biggest message that we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better.”
More additional updates, check here
