Witkoff and Kushner met Hamas leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh to reassure them Gaza war will not resume

A direct meeting held last Wednesday between President Trump’s envoys and Hamas leaders in Sharm el-Sheikh helped secure an agreement to end the war in Gaza, Israel’s Channel 12 reported.

One of the main obstacles to the deal was Hamas leaders’ fear that Israel would return to war after the prisoners were released. To clinch the agreement, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had to meet Hamas leaders in person and personally reassure them that Trump would not allow that to happen, as long as they honored their commitments under the deal.

The day before, during a meeting in the Oval Office before his departure to Egypt, Trump secretly authorized Witkoff and Kushner to meet Hamas leaders, if necessary, to complete the deal. After arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh, Witkoff informed Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators that Trump had given the green light for the step.

On Wednesday evening, at about 11 p.m., Qatari mediators arrived at Witkoff’s villa at the Four Seasons hotel and told the U.S. delegation that negotiations had reached an impasse, and asked whether the U.S. envoys were willing to meet Hamas leaders, according to one source.

A senior Qatari official told Witkoff: “We believe that if you meet them and shake their hands, there will be an agreement.”

Minutes later, Witkoff and Kushner entered another villa at the Red Sea resort. Inside the room they were met by the heads of Egyptian and Turkish intelligence, senior Qatari officials, and four senior Hamas leaders who had been part of the negotiations.

The Hamas team was headed by Khalil al-Hayya, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha three weeks earlier. During the roughly 45-minute meeting, Witkoff told Hamas officials that the abductees had shifted from being an asset to a burden on the movement, and therefore “it was time to move forward with the first phase of the agreement and return people to their homes on both sides of the border,” according to one source.

Al-Hayya asked whether Witkoff and Kushner had a message from Trump. Witkoff replied, according to the same source: “President Trump’s message is that you will be treated fairly, that he supports all twenty points of his peace plan, and will ensure they are all implemented.”

After the meeting, Hamas leaders moved to a separate room with the Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators. Minutes later, the head of Egyptian intelligence, Hassan Rashad, returned accompanied by his Turkish and Qatari counterparts. The Egyptian official told Witkoff and Kushner: “Based on the meeting we just held, we have reached an agreement.”

The meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh was the second significant direct contact between the Trump administration and Hamas. In March, President Trump’s envoy for hostages, Adam Boehler, held unprecedented meetings with Hamas leaders in Doha in an effort to free the American hostage Eidan Alexander and recover the remains of four other Americans taken by the movement.