Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Thursday with United States special envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the ongoing war in Gaza and stalled hostage talks, as US President Donald Trump urged Hamas’s surrender to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
The Prime Minister’s Office published a pair of pictures of Netanyahu and Witkoff speaking at the premier’s office in Jerusalem, but did not immediately release details on the meeting.
Trump, Witkoff, and Netanyahu have all blamed Hamas’s intransigence for the impasse in the talks mediated by the US, Qatar, and Egypt. Nonetheless, the US envoy is expected to press Netanyahu for concessions in hopes of putting negotiations back on track.
After pulling their negotiators from talks in Qatar last week, US and Israeli leaders promised to explore new ways to bring home the 50 hostages still held in Gaza, 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Among the potential options floated is the annexation of parts of the enclave, a move that would be difficult to reverse in the future. Under Israeli law, withdrawing from territory that has been formally annexed requires either the support of 80 lawmakers in the Knesset or a national referendum.
According to the Ynet news site, Witkoff is also expected to make a rare foray into Gaza during his trip. While there, he will visit aid distribution sites run by the US- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose operations have caused major international backlash over its failure to alleviate the humanitarian situation.
It would mark Witkoff’s second trip to Gaza this year, after he visited the Netzarim Corridor area in the Strip in late January, becoming the most senior US official to visit the territory in over a decade.
After blocking all aid from entering the Strip between March and May, Israel has relied heavily on the GHF, which was created to avoid aid being diverted to Hamas, for distribution.
However, GHF sites have seen near-daily incidents in which IDF troops have shot at Gazans, in what the military has presented as deadly crowd control incidents. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 1,000 people have been killed near the GHF sites, though Israel says the toll is exaggerated.
Meanwhile, Trump said Thursday that, in order to end the ongoing hunger in Gaza, the Hamas terror group should surrender and release the 50 hostages it is holding, 49 of whom were kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the war in Gaza. The other is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014, whose body has been held by Hamas since then.
“The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES!!!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The comments marked a change in tone compared to those he made earlier this week, when he said that Israel could do more to bring food into Gaza and that he was not convinced by Jerusalem’s claims that there was no starvation in the Strip.
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