White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff may travel on Sunday to either Doha or Cairo, where Israel is sending a team to resume hostage and ceasefire negotiations again should the talks go positively, he said in Washington at the American Jewish Committee’s launch of its Center for a New Middle East.
Witkoff acknowledged at this point, he is unsure how the negotiations will reach Israel and the US redline of Hamas having no part of the governing structure in Gaza.
“We are working, we’re making a lot of progress,” he said at the event on Tuesday night. “This is the initial phase of the negotiation where we’ve set some boundaries, some contours about what we want to talk about and what the outcomes we expect to happen.” He said this is from the United States at the direction of President Donald Trump.
“People are responsive,” but it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen, he said.
AJC’s chief policy and political affairs officer, Jason Isaacson, who led the Q&A with Witkoff, asked the envoy about cooperation with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Egypt, and Qatar.
Witkoff described Jordan and Egypt as “dug in” and focused on solutions.
Complicated situation
“It’s a complicated situation right now, but they’ve done a great job,” he said. “They’ve been available, and whenever I call them, they’re responsive.”
“The Jordanians have had a tough trip here… but they’ve managed through it,” he added.
Witkoff then delved into Trump’s Gaza plan, reiterating the administration’s talking point of the strip being “a slum that’s been decimated.”
Witkoff suggested that the Trump administration was not referring to a “giant eviction plan” when discussing “day after” plans for Gaza. However, Trump had initially proposed the permanent displacement of Palestinians from Gaza during his joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month.
Witkoff cited a lengthy February 16 article from the Wall Street Journal, “Trump Wants to Own Gaza. Here’s What It Would Take to Rebuild,” as validation for Trump’s plans.
“Whether the president’s plan for Gaza is realized or not, the scale and cost of rebuilding the Philadelphia-size enclave is monumental. While estimates vary, the United Nations says about 70% of structures in Gaza are either destroyed or damaged, including over 245,000 housing units. The war in the Gaza Strip has produced destruction equivalent to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record,” according to the WSJ.
The WSJ wrote that around 50 million tons of debris created during months of bombing are expected to take more than a decade to remove.
Witkoff heavily criticized the Biden administration for “not doing their work correctly” and basing the May 27 protocol on a five-year redevelopment plan.
“You can’t demolish everything there and clean it up in five years,” he said, pointing to the notion that the Saudis and Israelis were operating under for establishing relations.
“So when the Saudis talk normalization with the Israelis, and the defense treaty, they were thinking about it on a five-year time frame. Once you begin to think about it as a 15- or a 20-year deal, you almost beg the question, are Gazans going to wait? Do they even want to wait?” Witkoff said.
“Once the Saudis begin to incorporate that into their thinking, and the Egyptians and UAE and everybody who has a vested interest in Gaza, I think you’re going to see development plans that more mirror the way the president is thinking than what the May 27 protocol contemplated,” he added.
Witkoff agreed that the possibility of normalization between Israeli and Saudi will come after a fully formed Gaza redevelopment plan because “it’s just sequentially logical.”