by Israel National News
Steve Witkoff tells Fox News he and the rest of the Trump team had nothing to do with the "mathematics" of the hostage deal, which was worked out by the Biden Administration many months ago.
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| Steve Witkoff REUTERS/Andrew Kelly |
US President Donald Trump's Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff said that the hostage and ceasefire deal that went into effect between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization on Sunday is a step towards a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
"We were able to demonstrate that President Trump's policies - peace through strength - they work," Witkoff said in an interview with Fox News today (Wednesday). "Getting those three people out, that was a big deal. We've got four more coming out, I believe, this weekend. It's a testament to how the world perceives President Trump's Presidency."
"We had nothing to do with the mathematics behind the prisoner release and the hostage release," he claimed. "That was set ... in the so-called May 27th protocol that was agreed to by Hamas, by the Israelis, and monitored by the United States under the Biden Administration. That set the mathematics around how many Palestinians in Israeli jails would be released for each hostage who was coming out. Our job was to speed up the process because it felt like it had bogged down."
Witkoff was asked about President Donald Trump's statement that he is not confident that the ceasefire will hold and replied, "I don't disagree with the President. I think that the implementation of it is probably more difficult than the execution of the deal." He added that if the implementation "goes well, we'll get into phase two and we're gonna get a lot more live bodies out."
When asked about the prospects for a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, he said, "I think that normalization is an amazing opportunity for the region. It's basically the beginning of the end of war. The beginning of the end of war means that the entire region becomes investable, it becomes financiable. Banks do not have to underwrite whether the Houthis, Hezbollah, or Hamas is going to fire a missile and take down a hyperscale data center. So I think that normalization is huge for the State of Israel, it's huge for the region, and hopefully it happens."
"My own opinion is that a condition precedent to normalization was a ceasefire. We needed to get people believing again. First we needed the hopeful moment, and I like to think that we've achieved that. And then on top of that, we needed to show people that we could stop the violence and we could have conversation and dialogue. This is the beginning of that," he said.
"I think you could get everybody on board in that region," Witkoff said, singling out Qatar for praise in negotiating with Hamas. "We have an opportunity to get everybody bought-in to a better future for the region."
Israel National News
Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/402715
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