Steve Witkoff plans to visit the region often in the coming weeks to keep the ceasefire deal moving forward.
By JNS
Steve Witkoff, President-elect Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, may visit the Gaza Strip in an effort to keep the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas on track, a Trump transition official says.
“Witkoff also plans to be a near-constant presence in the region over the coming weeks and months to troubleshoot flare-ups on the ground that he believes could unravel the agreement and halt the release of hostages held by Hamas at any moment,” NBC News reported on Sunday.
“You have to be right on top of it, ready to snuff out a problem if it happens,” the official said, according to the report. “You got to see it, you got to feel it.”
The official also raised the question of where to put two million Gazans while reconstruction work goes on. Indonesia is one of the locations being considered to temporarily send some of them.
Trump on Sunday welcomed the imminent release of the first three three hostages—Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari— under the truce agreement with the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip.
“Hostages starting to come out today! Three wonderful young women will be first,” the president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump warned on Saturday that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement “better hold,” otherwise “all hell will break out.”
“Well, we’re going to see very soon, and it better hold,” Trump said during an interview with NBC News.
He said he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Just keep doing what you have to do. You have to have—this has to end. We want it to end, but to keep doing what has to be done.”
The U.S. president-elect, who will be inaugurated on Monday, said he would meet with Netanyahu “fairly shortly.”
Israel estimates that 25 of the 33 people on the list of hostages to be returned in the first stage of the renewed ceasefire deal are still alive. Ninety-four hostages abducted during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre are still being held in Gaza, at least one-third of them dead.
The 33 captives are considered “humanitarian” cases—women, children, men over 50, wounded and ill, including two mentally ill Israelis who entered the Strip on their own over a decade ago (Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed).
90 terrorists for three hostages
The Israel Prison Service is preparing to free 90 Palestinian terrorists as part of Sunday’s hostage release, the organization announced on Sunday afternoon. Some 1,500 guards will participate in the operation, it said.
Seventy-eight of the terrorists will be released to Judea and Samaria, and 12 to eastern Jerusalem, a spokesperson for the Prison Service told JNS.
In accordance with the terms of the ceasefire, the terrorists will not be freed until the three hostages have been returned to the Jewish state by the IDF.
Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, on Sunday morning rejected a petition filed by victims of terrorism that sought to block the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as part of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
“It is not our place or custom to intervene in matters of this type in which the scope of judicial review is extremely narrow,” the justices stated in their ruling.
Over the weekend, the Israeli Justice Ministry released the names of the terrorists who could be released as part of the ceasefire deal.
According to the ministry, Israel is to release 1,904 Palestinian terrorists in the first stage of the agreement: 737 prisoners and administrative detainees—among them murderers—and 1,167 residents of the Gaza Strip not involved in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
Among the prominent names on the list is Zakaria Zubeidi, who led Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the Samaria city of Jenin and escaped from Israel’s high-security Gilboa Prison in September 2021.
Zubeidi was recaptured five days after his prison break. Since he was not convicted of murder but of other terror offenses, he will not be deported abroad and is expected to be released back to Judea and Samaria.
Another Palestinian terrorist whose sentence is set to be commuted is Ahmad Barghouti, a cousin and close aide to Marwan Barghouti, the leader of the Second Intifada. Ahmad was sentenced to 13 life terms for leading a terror cell that carried out attacks in which 12 Israelis were killed, including the suicide bombing at the Seafood Market restaurant in Tel Aviv on March 5, 2002.
Other prominent terrorists include Khalida Jarrar, whom the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) said leads the PFLP terrorist group in Judea and Samaria.
Hamas terrorists Wael Qassem, Wassam Abbasi and Mohammed Odeh are responsible for bombings that killed 35 Israelis in 2002, including one in Jerusalem in which 11 Israelis were murdered, another in Rishon Letzion in which 15 Israelis were killed and a third at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in which nine people were killed, including four Americans.
Khalil Jabarin is serving a life sentence for stabbing to death dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ari Fuld at the Gush Etzion Junction in Judea in 2018.