White House special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to the Middle East this week to try to jump-start negotiations to continue the cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.
Witkoff told CNN on Feb. 23 that he would seek an extension of the cease-fire’s first phase, which is set to expire on March 2.
“We have to get an extension of phase one. I'll be going to the region this week, probably Wednesday, to negotiate that and we are hopeful that we have the proper time to begin phase two and finish it off and get more hostages released,” Witkoff told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The six-week first phase, which has largely held since beginning on Jan. 19, hit new snags over the weekend. Israel delayed releasing about 600 Palestinian prisoners after six hostages and four bodies—including three Bibas family members—were returned.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel was waiting to deliver the prisoners “until the release of the next hostages has been assured, and without the humiliating ceremonies.”
Hamas has paraded most of the hostages and coffins on stage or before crowds before turning them over to the Red Cross.
During the release of three of the six hostages freed on Feb. 22, not only were they brought on stage in central Gaza, but two others, Eviatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, were forced to witness it while not being released themselves, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel is still reeling from the revelation that Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, were not only dead but had been murdered. The boys’ coffins were paraded before a cheering crowd on Feb. 20. The three will be buried on Wednesday at a funeral near Kibbutz Nir Oz, where they lived and from where they were abducted on Oct. 7, 2023. The public has been asked to line the funeral route.
U.S. deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus called Gaza “a depraved society.” She told Fox News that Gaza “has to not only be demilitarized but has to be deradicalized.”
Hamas on Feb. 23 condemned Israel’s decision to delay releasing the Palestinian prisoners, denying the hostage ceremonies were humiliating and accusing Netanyahu of “a deliberate attempt to disrupt the [cease-fire] agreement.”
The White House said on Sunday that it supported Israel’s decision to delay releasing the prisoners. It cited Hamas’s “barbaric treatment” of Israeli hostages and called the delay an “appropriate response” in a statement from National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes.
Trump is prepared, Hughes said, to support Israel in “whatever course of action it chooses regarding Hamas.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar was in Brussels on Feb. 24 to confer with European Union counterparts and told them taht Israel was open to extending the ongoing cease-fire in Gaza if more hostages are released by Hamas.
“It will not happen without the release of hostages,” Sa'ar told the Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Finnish, and Slovakian foreign ministers, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel remains committed to its war objectives, which include not only the release of the hostages but also the elimination of Hamas’s military and governing capabilities and ensuring Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.
Sa'ar is meeting with the EU’s Association Council, Israel’s first meeting with it since 2022, to discuss the Gaza humanitarian situation, Israeli–Palestinian relations, and changing regional dynamics.
The cease-fire’s first phase featured an agreement for weekly exchanges totaling 33 Israeli hostages, living or dead, for almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them serving life or long prison terms after terrorism convictions prior to Oct. 7, 2023.
One prisoner released on Feb. 15 while serving seven life sentences plus 30 years for his role in planning a 2003 suicide bombing fell to his death in East Jerusalem on Saturday, Feb. 22. Nael Obeid, as the head of an East Jerusalem Hamas cell, spent more than a year planning the Cafe Hillel bombing, which killed seven and wounded 57.
The bombing, on Sept. 9, 2003, took among its victims Dr. David Applebaum, head of Shaare Zedek Hospital’s emergency room, where suicide bombing victims were treated, and his daughter Nava, who was to be married the next day. Obeid was arrested the next year. The cause of his fall was not immediately clear, according to the Times of Israel.
