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The phone call from Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, surprised the aides of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Calling from Doha in Qatar last Friday evening, after Shabbat had already begun, Witkoff announced he was coming to Israel and would meet Netanyahu. Overruling the suggestion of Netanyahu’s aides that they could meet once the Jewish day of rest was over, Witkoff, 67 – a billionaire lawyer and real estate developer – insisted brusquely that they meet in the morning.
In what some Israeli media described as a “tense meeting”, Witkoff delivered his message. The president-elect was emphatic that he wanted a ceasefire-for-hostages deal. Trump wanted the war in Gaza finished. He had other fish to fry.
“What happened,” a senior Israeli government official told Channel 14, regarded as a mouthpiece for Netanyahu, “is that Witkoff delivered a stern message from the incoming president of the United States, who unequivocally demanded the deal’s conclusion.”
Writing in the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth this week, Nadav Eyal summed up the situation confronting Israel’s prime minister and his closest aides. “Netanyahu … suddenly came to recognise precisely where it is that they stand with the new American president. They came to realise that Trump speaks at dictation pace, and they will never be able to outflank him from the right. Trump, once again, wants a deal.”
Witkoff was not the only figure working to get a deal. Over the weekend, and into this week, the incumbent US president, Joe Biden, his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and senior figures from Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf – all mediators in the long-running negotiations – were working to put pressure on Israel and Hamas to bring the talks to a conclusion.
On Monday, Turkey’s intelligence chief, İbrahim Kalin, spoke to members of Hamas’s political bureau to apply Ankara’s own pressure.
Issues that had been sticking points for months, not least for Netanyahu, who had earlier in the year retreated from a deal he himself had promoted, suddenly were up for negotiation.
Despite the rising optimism that the sides were fast closing in on an agreement, the days since Witkoff’s meeting with Netanyahu were marked by a series of crises over the granular detail, including claims of manoeuvres until the final hours, and contradictory messaging.
By Wednesday afternoon, however, the indications were fast aligning that a deal was imminent, as Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, announced he was flying back to Israel from a foreign trip to be available for a vote on the deal.
Trump himself scrambled to take credit on Truth Social on Wednesday.
“This EPIC ceasefire agreement could have only happened as a result of our Historic Victory in November, as it signalled to the entire World that my Administration would seek Peace and negotiate deals to ensure the safety of all Americans, and our Allies,” he wrote.
“I am thrilled American and Israeli hostages will be returning home to be reunited with their families and loved ones.”
The deal is thought to comprise a three-phase agreement – based on the framework originally laid out by Biden and endorsed by the UN security council with Netanyahu’s own buy-in (quickly reversed) in 2024.
It stipulates the release of 33 hostages over a six-week period, including women, children, older adults and wounded civilians, in exchange for potentially hundreds of Palestinian women and children imprisoned by Israel.
Among the 33 would be five female Israeli soldiers, each of whom would be released in exchange for 50 Palestinian prisoners, including 30 convicted militants serving life sentences. By the end of the first phase, all civilian captives – living or dead – would be released.
Crucially, in delivering an initial six-week halt to fighting, the deal is planned to open the way for further negotiations aimed at ending the war completely.
It remained unclear exactly when and how many displaced Palestinians would be able to return to what remains of their homes, and whether the agreement would lead to a complete end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza – key Hamas demands for releasing the remaining captives.
The deal, as it has emerged – and if it sticks – allows an element of face-saving on both sides. For Netanyahu, who swore to fight until a “total” – if ill-defined and unattainable – victory, the promised release of living hostages and bodies in the so-called humanitarian category of women, children and the ill brings him closer to the widely held view of most Israelis that a hostage deal should be a priority.
For Hamas, Israel’s concessions on quitting buffer zones such as the Netzarim corridor and agreeing to the return of civilians to Gaza’s north – albeit after they are screened – is closer to their own maximalist position that a comprehensive deal is possible only with the end of fighting and the withdrawal of Israel’s forces. In between, however, remain a multitude of grey areas and unresolved questions.
Given the shape of the deal, one of the most pressing questions for Netanyahu is why he did not accept a similar agreement on offer as far back as May 2024.
The willingness of Netanyahu to deal at the last moment under pressure from Trump – defying far-right members of his coalition including Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – has not been lost on Israeli commentators.
“I ask myself where did all the obstacles go?” wrote Ben Caspit in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv. “All the conditions? All the ridiculous spins that were thrown out by the leader and were echoed by his mouthpieces?
“And what about the Philadelphi corridor [on the border with Egypt]? All of the obstacles that emerged at decisive moments in the negotiations, all of the statements that were issued, including several that were issued during the Sabbath, about how Israel would never leave, never stop, never surrender and never give in?”
While Netanyahu has faced a pincer movement from the incoming and outgoing US presidents, he has also seen a change in his own political circumstances that has opened the way for more flexibility.
The relative success of Israel in its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and more widely against Iran’s “axis of resistance” – even if it has not seen the anticipated return of many Israelis to the country’s north from where they have been displaced – has offered a measure of respite to be talked up.
The hard arithmetic of Netanyahu’s right-far-right coalition has also altered, not least with the return of former Likud party rival Gideon Sa’ar and his faction in September, undermining the influence of Ben Gvir and the far right.
Ben Gvir himself appeared to accept the inevitable, boasting to his constituency on X that his party had blocked a deal from being done on numerous previous occasions.
All of this has made life complicated for the Netanyahu proxies who have previously talked up the Israeli prime minister’s resolve and how friendly Trump would be to Israel.
“The pressure Trump is exerting right now is not the kind that Israel expected from him,” lamented the rightwing commentator Jacob Bardugo on Channel 14 on Monday. “The pressure is the essence of the matter.”
While Netanyahu has historically been able to use the threat of White House pressure as a public get out of jail free card, it is not clear – with all the risks inherent in the deal for him – that it is the case this time.
