Washington, DC – US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, announced he would visit Gaza in the coming days as part of what he called an “inspection team” tasked with monitoring the The ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas last week.
During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Witkoff said he would visit two Israeli-held areas of Gaza as part of an upcoming trip to Israel.
“I’m going to be part of an inspection team at the Netzarim corridor and also the Philadelphia corridor,” Witkoff said. “That’s where you have outside monitors, who kind of make sure that people are safe and that those who come in are unarmed, and that no one has bad motives.”
The Netzarim Corridor separates north and south Gaza and has been occupied by Israeli forces since they invaded the Palestinian enclave in late October 2023. The Philadelphia Corridor stretches between southern Gaza and Egypt. The Israeli army took “operational control” of the area in May last year.
The trip will be the envoy’s first visit to the Middle East since Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire deal on January 15. Witkoff, a businessman with no prior diplomatic experience, had already participated in the talks in Qatar that resulted in the deal.
It will also be Witkoff’s first trip since Trump took office on Monday. Since his inauguration, Trump has said he has little confidence the deal will hold. The agreement came into force on Sunday, and a day later an Israeli sniper killed a child in Rafah in an incident caught on video.
“We have to make sure that the implementation goes well, because if it goes well, we will enter phase two and we will recover a lot more live bodies,” Witkoff said, referring to Israeli captives held in the country. Gaza.
“And I think that’s the president’s directive to me and everyone who works in the U.S. government on this.”
An agreement in three phases
The ceasefire agreement has three phases. Only the implementation of the first phase has started.
Over the next six weeks, this phase should be marked by a pause in fighting; a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, particularly from the Netzarim corridor; and an increase in aid to the enclave.
Fifteen months of war in Gaza have left the enclave razed and the vast majority of its population displaced. The United Nations has repeatedly warned of imminent famine in northern Gaza, and its experts have compared Israel’s war tactics to genocide.
In total, at least 47,107 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023. Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel have killed 1,139 people, of whom more than 200 have been captured.
The first phase of the ceasefire also aims to see 33 Israeli captives released from Gaza and around 1,000 Palestinians freed from Israeli detentions. Three Israeli captives and 90 Palestinian prisoners have so far been released.
The second and third phases have been agreed in principle, but negotiations on the details continue. The second phase is expected to see the release of remaining Israeli prisoners in exchange for the “complete withdrawal” of Israeli forces from Gaza.
This goal would contradict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous commitments to maintain control of Gaza’s security indefinitely after the war. Far-right members of Netanyahu’s government have also called for a resumption of fighting once the first phase ends.
Details of the third phase are less clear, but they would include multi-year reconstruction plans in Gaza and the return of bodies of captives.
The current agreement does not include any agreement on who will govern Gaza after the war.
“Not confident”
Witkoff spoke to Fox News a day after Trump told reporters he was “not sure” the ceasefire deal would hold.
“This is not our war. This is their war. But I’m not confident,” Trump told a reporter during a White House photo opportunity. “I looked at a picture of Gaza. Gaza is like a mass demolition site.
The US president, whose first term ran from 2017 to 2021, had demanded a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel before his inauguration day, promising “hell to pay” if he did not. was not concluded.
It was not immediately clear what Trump’s reaction would be if Israel broke the deal.
Trump has generally been more sensitive to Israeli interests than his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
Yet the Biden administration has pledged “unwavering” support for Israel and refused to take advantage of the billions of dollars in military support the United States is providing Israel in exchange for a cease-fire.
Both Trump and Biden claimed credit for reaching this month’s ceasefire deal.
As he begins his second term, Trump is expected to expand U.S. support for Israel. His administration, for example, is filled with pro-Israel hawks, including supporters of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He has already lifted Biden-era sanctions against Israeli settler groups accused of violence against Palestinians.
Yet Trump ran pledging to be a global peacemaker and end conflicts abroad as part of his “America First” agenda.
Speaking on Wednesday, Witkoff credited Trump’s approach of “peace through strength” as the driving force behind the ceasefire, while acknowledging that the new administration was not involved in the “math.” which constituted the terms of the agreement.
New standardization effort
Witkoff also said he hoped to revive the Arab-Israeli normalization efforts led by Trump during his first term, in order to make Israel less diplomatically isolated.
The so-called Abraham Accords saw Israel establish diplomatic ties with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, but the negotiations were widely criticized for sidelining Palestinian interests.
Experts also said the future of the Abraham Accords was in doubt amid regional outrage over the Gaza war.
Witkoff nevertheless said he believed a long-elusive normalization deal with Saudi Arabia could still be reached. He went even further, saying he believed all countries in the region could “buy into” such an agreement.
“My own view is that a ceasefire was a conditional prerequisite for normalization,” Witkoff said. “We had to give people confidence again. »
When asked to elaborate on which other countries he believed would be open to a deal, Witkoff cited Qatar, praising its role as mediator in the Gaza negotiations.
Qatar has repeatedly rejected the prospect of normalizing relations with Israel.
