Top officials said already gearing up for 2nd phase hostage talks, ahead of schedule

Top officials from the US, Israel, and Egypt were reportedly already moving on the second stage of the Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal on Wednesday, some two weeks ahead of the scheduled date for the discussions to begin.

The reports came as Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said he was ready to start mediating talks on the second stage of the three-phase deal as soon as possible, and as US President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, asserted his commitment to reaching the second phase amid concerns that Israel will resume fighting after the first stage is over.

The Qatari prime minister told the Walla outlet that he plans to speak to Mossad head David Barnea this week to begin discussing negotiations on the second phase of the agreement: “We are pushing for this.”

Al Thani spoke in Davos, where he is attending the annual World Economic Forum.

Witkoff will also hold talks on the second phase when he arrives, Walla reported.

An unnamed senior Israeli official told the Walla site that Israel has “no problem” beginning the talks before day 16, but cautioned that the process could be lengthy.

“Negotiations on the first phase lasted months, and reaching an agreement on the second phase may also take a long time,” the unnamed official said. Previously, Israeli officials have said the discussions were set to begin on day 16 of the first phase of the deal.

Another Israeli official told the site that Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and Barnea held talks on the deal during their Cairo meetings with Egyptian intelligence officials this week, but noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not yet had a meeting on the second phase of the deal. Nonetheless, he stressed that Israel wants to see the ceasefire plan through.

Channel 12 reported that while in Egypt, Bar and Barnea specifically discussed details of the second phase of the deal, including how many Palestinian security prisoners would be released for each Israeli hostage set free.

Qatar, Egypt, and the United States brokered the multi-phase deal between Israel and Hamas terrorists, and the two Arab countries have set up a communications hub in Cairo to head off new clashes between the foes.

Despite the reported developments, the fate of the latter stages of the ceasefire deal is still in question. Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said Netanyahu promised him that fighting will be renewed after the first phase ends. Smotrich has vowed to not allow a deal that stops the war before Hamas is destroyed.

Even Trump, who has touted his role in securing the deal, said Monday he was “not confident” that the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement would be upheld through all three phases.

Trump said Tuesday he is considering a visit to the Middle East, but not immediately.

Arab diplomats speaking to The Times of Israel have credited Trump and Witkoff, who held talks in Qatar and Israel in the final week of the Gaza negotiations, with helping bring the deal across the finish line, particularly by pressuring Netanyahu.

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In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Witkoff tied the success of the second stage to the deal with getting more living hostages out.

“We have to make sure that the implementation goes well, because if it goes well, we’ll get into phase two, and we’re going to get a lot more live bodies out,” Witkoff said.

Netanyahu has pledged to resume fighting if the negotiations regarding the terms of phase two do not see Hamas cede both military and governing powers in Gaza, which the terror group is not expected to do.

Asked about Trump’s lack of confidence, Witkoff said he doesn’t disagree with the president and that implementation of the deal will likely be more difficult than the initial agreement.

Witkoff said senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk’s recent statement to The New York Times that Hamas is prepared to enter a dialogue with the new Trump administration would be welcome if accurate.

“I’m actually going to be going over to Israel. I’m going to be part of an inspection team at the Netzarim Corridor, and also at the Philadelphi Corridor,” Witkoff said but did not give an exact timeline for when he’ll depart.

Netzarim is an east-west strip that Israel cleared during the war. It prevents Palestinians’ free movement between northern and southern Gaza. Philadelphi is a narrow border strip between Gaza and Egypt.

“That’s where you have outside overseers, sort of making sure that people are safe and people who are entering are not armed and no one has bad motivations,” Witkoff added. He did not say who else might be part of the inspection teams.

Asked what he told the parties during the negotiations, Witkoff said he highlighted Trump’s threat of “all hell to pay” in the region if the hostages weren’t released by his January 20 inauguration.

He noted that he wasn’t involved in the crafting of the deal, whose framework was advanced by the Biden administration. “Our job was to speed up the process because it felt like it had bogged down… It doesn’t happen without the president,” Witkoff said.

The US envoy is very close to the president and was seated close to him during Monday’s inauguration. He was seen briefly speaking to former US president Joe Biden at the end of the ceremony. Witkoff told Fox News that he was thanking Biden for allowing him to work on the hostage deal, adding that the former president thanked him in response.

Biden had indeed directed his team to cooperate with the incoming administration on the hostage deal following Trump’s November election win. Biden’s White House Mideast czar Brett McGurk worked closely with Witkoff in the last week of negotiations.

Witkoff spoke to his goal of expanding the Abraham Accords, insisting that all countries in the region could eventually join the alliance.

“Normalization is an amazing opportunity for the region. It’s basically the beginning of the end of war [which] means that the entire region becomes investable [and] financeable,” he said. “Banks do not have to underwrite whether the Houthis, Hezbollah or Hamas are going to fire a missile and take down a hyper-scale data center.”

He noted that a precondition to expanding the Abraham Accords has been a ceasefire in Gaza.

“First, we needed the hopeful moment, and I’d like to think that we’ve achieved that, and we’ll build on that. Then on top of that, we needed to show people that we could stop the violence and that we could have conversation and dialogue. This is the beginning of that,” he adds.

Asked who are potential candidates for joining the Abraham Accords, Witkoff highlighted Qatar, lauding the role of its prime minister in mediating between Israel and Hamas.

Doha has long asserted that it will not normalize relations with Israel until a Palestinian state has been established.

With the start of the first stage of the ceasefire deal conversation around the “day after” in Gaza has intensified, with many international figures calling for the Palestinian Authority to return to controlling the Strip, as well as for increased efforts toward reaching a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian two-state solution.

According to a report in the Saudi-owned, UK-based Asharq Al-Awsat on Wednesday, Israel has agreed to allow the PA to take control of the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt in future stages of the deal.

The Prime Minister’s Office partially denied the report, accusing the PA of attempting to “create a false picture to the effect that it controls the crossing.”

The Israeli official who spoke to Walla said that Israel will continue to demand that Hamas not be permitted to govern Gaza after the war. According to Walla, Egypt has been working with Palestinian factions in recent weeks to establish what it calls a “civilian committee” to potentially run Gaza alongside the international community and representatives of the Palestinian Authority.

Hamas released three Israeli hostages on Sunday as the deal came into effect, bringing a halt to the war that began October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing over 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages.

The first stage of the framework, first presented by then-US president Joe Biden in a May 31, 2024, speech, provides for a temporary ceasefire, the release of 33 Israeli hostages, and the freeing of nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners and detainees.

Ninety-one of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.