Witkoff to appear on US networks after ceasefire talks in Doha

The Trump administration’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will give a round of interviews on US news channels today after mediating talks in Qatar last week aimed at extending a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Witkoff will appear on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to discuss “the ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas,” the news channel writes on X. He will also appear on CNN’s “State of the Union, ” though the subject matter is not disclosed.

Witkoff traveled last week to Doha, where the US, Egypt and Qatar are mediating indirect talks between Jerusalem and the Hamas terror group over the war in Gaza and Israeli hostages still held there.

After leaving Qatar on Wednesday, Witkoff also held talks with officials in Russia and Azerbaijan.

Following the Israeli team’s return from Doha on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a Saturday night meeting with close officials, after which he instructed his hostage negotiating team to prepare for the next round of talks based on a proposal from Witkoff, which would see 11 living hostages and half the slain captives released “immediately.”

The “Witkoff proposal,” which the US envoy presented in Doha on Wednesday and detailed in part on Friday, has been said by Israel to call for half the living hostages to be released at the start of an extended ceasefire that would last until the end of the Passover holiday in mid-April, with the possibility of the rest of the hostages being released at the end of the period.

On Friday, Witkoff dismissed as disingenuous a Hamas offer earlier in the day to release captive soldier Edan Alexander — the last known living American-Israeli hostage — and the remains of four unidentified dual nationals.

As Israel’s negotiating team prepared to meet with the prime minister on Saturday night, Channel 12 reported that the negotiations in Doha could be nearing collapse, with the sides unable to agree on the terms for continuing the ceasefire that came into effect in January.