Mr. Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s new envoy to the Middle East deserves congratulations from all of us in Israel on successfully completing a hostage-ceasefire deal even before officially starting his role.
Watching the videos and seeing the pictures of the hostages returning to Israel, hugging their family members, and waving to crowds of admirers touched every Israeli heart and brought tears of joy and relief around the world.
Witkoff’s efforts at pushing for a deal were the key factor that brought these hostages home from the hell of captivity they suffered for over 450 days. We hope his efforts are continuously blessed with success and all the hostages are returned home safely to their families.
As a successful businessman and real estate mogul, his expertise has clearly made a difference in hostage negotiations and procuring a deal. During Trump’s first term in office, skeptics expressed doubt at the ability of the president, Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt, and former US ambassador David Friedman to secure peace and normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries.
These men, led by the president himself, didn’t have as extensive experience as previous American diplomats enjoyed. How could novices secure difficult diplomatic agreements?
However, their lack of experience in international diplomacy proved not only to not be a liability, but their original perspective became their ultimate advantage, leading them to secure deals their more experienced predecessors couldn’t achieve. By demonstrating the same originality and tenacity, Trump, Kushner, Greenblatt, and Friedman also succeeded.
Like Witkoff
Like Witkoff, I grew up in the New York area, and my father was also in the garment industry. As a child and teenager, I went to summer camp in Upstate New York, where I met some of my lifelong friends.
One of those friends was the late Ari Fuld. Later in life, Ari and I would both move to Israel and become advocates for a strong and secure Israel. Ari was a strong man, a special forces warrior in the IDF and the head of his town’s security team.
On a warm September Sunday morning, Ari was exiting a grocery store where he had been picking up some groceries for his family. A 16-year-old Palestinian watched Ari exit the supermarket and stabbed him from behind.
Always the hero, Ari ignored his fatal wound and chased the terrorist, jumping a fence and shooting him before he was able to kill anyone else. Unfortunately, Ari didn’t survive the incident and died that day, leaving behind his wife and children.
I’m writing about Ari because in the deal Witkoff brokered, Ari’s killer was set free after serving only five years in jail. This has caused unimaginable pain to Ari’s family and friends.
After his election, everyone in Israel felt strengthened and inspired by Trump’s threat to Hamas and its supporters that “all hell would break loose” if the hostages weren’t home by the time he took office.
Israelis imagined that Trump’s threat meant that if all the hostages weren’t home by January 20, he would turn the United States military machine on to the savages in Gaza and those helping them. Israelis were familiar with Trump’s commitment to keep his promises and were confident they’d have their hostages safely home by January 20.
They remembered former president Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration and the release of the American hostages held in Iran the moment he took the oath of office.
Just as Reagan had intimidated the Iranians, Israelis saw a “Reaganesque” turn to Trump’s threat. They never imagined that Trump had meant a deal that would require Israel to release over 700 convicted terrorists and over 1,000 Palestinian Gazans captured during this war.
Releasing convicted terrorists from jail worries Israelis. In 2006, Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was taken captive by Hamas and hidden in Gaza for over five years. In 2011, a deal similar to the one just brokered saw Schalit freed in exchange for releasing over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
At the time, over 79% of Israelis favored the deal to release Schalit. One of the Palestinian prisoners freed in the deal was Hamas member Yahya Sinwar.
Twelve years later, on October 7, Sinwar would lead his terrorist followers to perpetrate the massacre that began this war. Many Israelis trace the October 7 massacre back to the Schalit deal that freed Sinwar.
Israelis are now concerned that the close to 2,000 Palestinians gaining their freedom from Israeli jails in this most recent deal could eventually lead to more terror attacks, the loss of even more innocent Israeli lives, and even another attack of the scale and scope of October 7.
Israelis have spent the past two weeks balancing their emotions between the elation of the freed hostages and the worry over terrorists running free in Israel.
They have great hopes for Trump and Witkoff’s future success but also raise deep concerns over future deals that could free even more terrorists. Many Israelis aren’t against negotiated deals and recognize that they require sacrifice and risk.
At the same time, they would prefer their hostages weren’t being used as pawns by terrorist organizations to secure the release of more terrorists.
Unlike Palestinian terrorists, Israeli hostages don’t deserve to sit in jail and shouldn’t require anything other than justice to earn their freedom.
Israelis hope that going forward Witkoff puts more effort into freeing all the hostages while keeping Palestinian terrorists in jail where they deserve to be kept for their dastardly crimes.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world. He recently published his book, Zionism Today.