President Donald Trump’s envoy for the Middle East said the war in Gaza would come to an end by the end of the year “one way or another.”
“We think that we’re going to settle this one way or another, certainly before the end of this year,” Steve Witkoff told Fox News in an interview on Tuesday.
It has been nearly 700 days since Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, killing over 60,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the territory’s health authorities that are widely viewed as reliable and backed by the United Nations. The assault followed the Oct. 7 attacks, in which Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostages.
Witkoff said Hamas was “100 percent” responsible for holding up a negotiated peace deal.
“There’s been a deal on the table for the last six or seven weeks that would have released 10 of the hostages out of the 20 who we think are alive,” he said. “And it was Hamas who slow-played that process and it is Hamas now who are saying we accept that deal, and I think in large part they’re … changing their mind because the Israelis are putting some very intense pressure on them.”
Hamas agreed to a proposal from Qatari and Egyptian mediators over a week ago that would return some Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Israel has pledged to review the terms of the deal and respond but has so far not agreed to it, instead pushing ahead with a renewed assault on Gaza City despite mounting international opposition.
Meanwhile, a full-blown famine was declared in Gaza last week, with a U.N.-backed food security body warning that millions of Palestinians face starvation.
At least 20 people were also killed by Israeli missile strikes at a hospital on Monday, including five journalists, in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “tragic mishap.”
Witkoff called that attack “a tragedy … But it’s a war. And part of what we’re trying to do is shut that war down.”
He added that Trump was convening a “large meeting” at the White House on Wednesday to hash out the details of a “comprehensive plan” to rebuild Gaza, which Israel’s assault has left a “demolition zone.”
Another conflict the Trump administration is eager to resolve by the close of 2025 is the war in Ukraine.
After whirlwind summits in Alaska and Washington with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Witkoff said “the end is in sight” and the U.S. was “hopeful that by the end of this year, and maybe quite a bit sooner, we actually can find the ingredients to get to that peace deal.”
Russia had put forward a peace proposal that “involves Donetsk,” the eastern region of Ukraine partially occupied by the Kremlin’s troops, Witkoff said, talking up the offer as major “progress.”
Ukraine and its allies have repeatedly said the war can end as soon as Moscow stops its full-scale invasion, which it launched in the winter of 2022. But the Kremlin is refusing to do so unless Kyiv bows to its demands, including giving up vast, heavily fortified swaths of territory in Ukraine’s east.
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