The phased ceasefire caps more than a year of start-and-stop talks. It aims to halt fighting that has left Gaza in ruins, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, shattered most of its hospitals and driven most of Gaza’s population from their homes. The 93 hostages held by Hamas would also be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and large amounts of humanitarian aid would be shipped into the enclave.
There was little fanfare when Trump’s transition team announced Witkoff’s appointment in a short statement in November.
“Steve will be an unrelenting voice for PEACE, and make us all proud,” it said before a brief biography listing his business achievements.
Trump’s transition team did not specify what his role would entail, and it remains unclear whether it is a formal federal job, in which case he would be required to step down from the Witkoff Group, his privately held global real estate development and investment firm based in New York, which he runs with his son Alex Witkoff. He would also have to file a financial disclosure form detailing all of his holdings.
Golf buddies
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Trump and Witkoff were longtime golf buddies.
“Steve and I would be the two guys who would play Trump and somebody else, and lose,” he said, adding that the president-elect made the decision to appoint his friend after Witkoff broached the idea of working on the Middle East over lunch with the president-elect.
“That stunned me because I didn’t know he was that interested in the Mideast,” Graham told NBC News last week. “And Trump looked at me and said, ‘Well, a million people have tried. Let’s pick a nice guy who’s a smart guy.’”
Graham said Witkoff’s time spent working on the ceasefire deal came “at his own expense.”
When Trump started to talk to Witkoff about the job, Graham said, “he was very sensitive” and had pledged not to do “anything that the Biden administration didn’t find helpful.” He had become “good friends” with McGurk throughout the process.
Like Trump, Witkoff made his fortune in real estate in both New York and Florida. Like Trump, he brought family members — his wife, Lauren, and sons Alex and Zach — into the Witkoff Group.
Like Trump, Witkoff is an avid golfer, and he was on the president-elect’s course in West Palm Beach, Florida, during the apparent assassination attempt in September.
After the incident, Witkoff told NBC News he knew immediately that a series of loud “pops” was gunfire, and he praised the Secret Service for its quick response in getting Trump off the course in under 20 seconds.
Perhaps aware that some might question whether his business ties in the region allowed him to be impartial, Witkoff said at a December Bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi that he would take a step back from them.
“Everything will be in some sort of blind trust for the time being while I’m envoy for the president with a much more consequential job at this stage in my life,” Witkoff said at the conference.
In contrast, Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son whom Witkoff was traveling with, said he would take the opposite route and steer clear of politics. The two men then traveled to Saudi Arabia, where Witkoff had helped set up the crypto company the Trump Organization recently launched.
Since announcing his appointment, Trump has said little about Witkoff’s brief. But at a news conference in December, he praised Witkoff for a “fantastic job” and said he had been working “endlessly for months” to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas. Trump has also warned that if the hostages whom Hamas is still holding in Gaza are not released by his inauguration on Monday, “all hell will break out in the Middle East.”
Witkoff in turn was effusive about his boss, telling reporters that Trump’s “stature” and the “red lines he’s put out there” had helped push the talks forward. Trump, he said, “gives us a lot of authority to speak on his behalf, and he exhorts us to speak emphatically. And emphatically means, ‘You better do this.’”
This pressure reportedly allowed Witkoff to lean on the notoriously tough and canny Benjamin Netanyahu during talks and compel the Israeli prime minister to agree to a deal despite objections.
Witkoff’s approach undoubtedly helped them succeed at “one of the hardest things to negotiate,” said Nick Candy, a London-based property developer who knows Witkoff from Mar-a-Lago.
Candy, who, like Witkoff, has projects and business ties in the Middle East, said his charisma and fairness would help him in negotiations in the region.
“Some of my closest friends in the Gulf have already been to Mar-a-Lago to see Steve and the president. And they are very impressed,” he said.
The post Trump’s man in the room for Gaza negotiations appeared first on NBC News.
