The Sheik, the Mogul and the Diplomat: The Trio That Sealed the Gaza Ceasefire

At his seaside office complex in Doha on Wednesday night, Qatar’s prime minister thought he had a deal. Hamas negotiators, led by a powerful former lawmaker, had left the prime minister’s office after abandoning an 11th-hour demand that was the last major obstacle to a ceasefire in Gaza after 466 days of war.

Journalists had begun to gather in an auditorium downstairs, expecting to witness the prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, announce that he and other mediators had finally brokered a deal. Two American envoys joined Sheikh Mohammed as he prepared his statement.

Suddenly, there was a new problem, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.

In a room elsewhere on the sixth floor, the Israeli delegation, led by the heads of Israel’s two main intelligence agencies, had their own last-minute demand. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to clarify the names of a handful of Palestinian prisoners that Israel would release during the ceasefire.

As his aides tried to resolve the final issue, Sheikh Mohammed sat in his office with Brett McGurk, President Biden’s chief negotiator, and Steve Witkoff, the representative for President-elect Donald J. Trump, hoping their efforts had not been wasted .

This account of the last few days of negotiations is based on interviews with nine people involved in or briefed on the talks, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

The truce ultimately announced at the delayed news briefing, hours after Israel’s new demands, was little different from versions promoted for most of the past year by brokers from Egypt, Qatar and the Biden administration, whose representatives met frequently with the warring parties in Cairo, Doha and several European capitals throughout 2024.

What pushed the deal over the line this past week was the unlikely partnership of envoys from current and future US presidents working with Qatar’s prime minister in marathon late-night meetings. While Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump has competed for credit, the reality is that their representatives were both crucial to the final push, each using different approaches to nudge the Israeli leadership toward a deal, while Sheikh Mohammed focused on Hamas.

Starting last Sunday, the Israeli and Palestinian delegation, as well as the two Americans, spent long days at the prime minister’s compound near the old market in downtown Doha. The delegations, which do not speak directly to each other, sat in different rooms on different floors, with Qatari and Egyptian officials passing messages between the two sides.

“They are not natural partners, but the combination of these three individuals and the three worlds they represent was the only thing that would get this done,” said Thomas R. Nides, a former US ambassador to Israel. “You needed pressure from all sides — pressure from the Arab world, pressure from Biden and pressure from Trump.”

A number of officials and interlocutors had helped push the negotiations forward for more than a year; on the American side, Mr. McGurk helped oversee US mediation efforts since the opening weeks of the war, along with other key players, including the head of the CIA, William J. Burns.

But in the final days it came down to the triumvirate. It was Mr. McGurk, a veteran diplomat long focused on the Middle East, who helped work out the deal’s complicated details nearly a year ago. It was Mr. Witkoff, a real estate investor who plays golf with Mr. Trump, who was instrumental in persuading Israel to finally agree to the content of the agreement. And it was Sheikh Mohammed who persuaded Hamas to make key compromises while providing both sides with office space to discuss the final details.

The deal they sealed provides a pause of at least six weeks in the fighting, with Hamas agreeing to gradually release 33 of the hostages captured during the group’s raid on Israel at the start of the war on October 7, 2023. In return, Israel has pledged to gradually release about 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom are serving life sentences for murder, and allow hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans to return to their homes.

The agreement is extremely similar to proposals the two sides nearly agreed to between May and July 2024. Those talks broke down amid disagreements over whether to reach a permanent or temporary ceasefire, whether and how to allow displaced Gazans to return home , how and when Israeli troops may withdraw from Gaza, and the number of hostages Hamas may release in the first weeks of a ceasefire.

As a result, the war dragged on, leading to the killing of tens of thousands more Palestinians, as well as numerous Israeli hostages.

Critics accused Mr. Netanyahu to sabotage the talks to avoid a collapse of his governing coalition, which included lawmakers opposed to a deal. Others said Hamas had deliberately prolonged the talks in the hope that Israel could be entrenched in a wider regional conflict with Hamas’ allies in Lebanon, Iran and Yemen. At times, Qatar refused to continue mediating, accusing both sides of half-hearted engagement.

Momentum returned after Mr. Trump’s re-election in November, even before the president-elect warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released upon his inauguration. He appointed Mr. Witkoff, who had no diplomatic experience but growing business ties in Qatar, as his envoy to the Middle East. Mr. Witkoff had played golf with Mr. Trump in September during what law enforcement officials said was an attempt on the former and future president’s life.

Quietly, members of the Biden administration reached out to Mr. Witkoff to see if they could work together on the truce talks, according to two people familiar with the talks. Despite large political gaps between their bosses, Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff to coordinate, sometimes they spoke several times a day, according to one of the people.

Yet there were still large gaps between Hamas and Israel. Shortly before Christmas, with only weeks left in the Biden presidency, Mr. McGurk dejected back from a trip to Doha. He told the Qataris that he would not fly back unless Hamas gave a clear signal of its interest in a deal, according to two people familiar with his thinking.

That moment came in the first days of January, according to two people involved in the process. Sheikh Mohammed persuaded Hamas to confirm the names of more than 30 hostages who would be released during the first six weeks of a ceasefire, a long-awaited move that suggested the group was genuinely interested in a deal, the people said. The reason for Hamas’s shift remains unclear, but analysts say Israel’s increasing dominance over Hamas’s main allies, Hezbollah and Iran, left the group feeling isolated, while its own battlefield losses in Gaza left it feeling weakened .

Mr. McGurk was informed of the breakthrough while attending his daughter’s birthday party at an indoor trampoline park on Jan. 4, according to two people familiar with the event. He left the party halfway through and immediately flew to Doha to meet Sheikh Mohammed, his Egyptian counterparts and Israeli negotiators. Mr. Witkoff joined him on January 10, and the pair agreed with Sheikh Mohammed that the Americans would jointly focus on persuading Israel, while the prime minister would pressure Hamas.

The main remaining differences centered on the depth of a buffer zone that Israel sought to maintain within Gaza’s borders, as well as the number of prisoners to be exchanged for wounded and sick hostages.

It was a visit at short notice by Mr. Witkoff in Jerusalem last Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath that brought a new breakthrough, according to four officials briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Witkoff sat with Mr. Netanyahu and senior Israeli officials in the prime minister’s Jerusalem office, where Mr. McGurk participated in the discussion by telephone.

The two Americans pressed Mr. Netanyahu to bleed on the last two major hurdles, according to a person familiar with the discussion. Mr. McGurk warned the Israeli leader that he risked losing his best chance to strike a deal. Then Mr. Witkoff the necessary pressure and emphasized to Mr. Netanyahu that Mr. Trump wanted this deal done, the person said.

After the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu to have changed his position, four officials said. He immediately ordered his four top negotiators—including David Barnea, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, and Ronen Bar, Israel’s domestic spy chief—to Doha.

Over the next four days, Sheikh Mohammed hosted a series of marathon meetings, mostly in his personal office, as Hamas officials, Israeli negotiators, Egyptian intelligence officers and the two Americans spoke with him, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning .

The Israeli and Hamas teams, based on different floors, never saw each other; they took turns going into the prime minister’s office to get updates on their enemy’s latest position.

Progress was sometimes hindered by the nature of Hamas’ command structure, which required its leaders in Qatar to check certain details with their counterparts in Gaza, all of whom are in hiding and hard to reach.

Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff also frequently checked in with their respective bosses; At times, Mr. McGurk with Mr. Biden, while Mr. Witkoff, just a few feet away, was on the phone with Mr. Trump or his team, according to a person familiar with the scene.

“We negotiated word by word, sentence by sentence and formula by formula,” said Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, a foreign minister at Qatar’s foreign ministry. “It gets exhausting mentally and physically.”

The biggest breakthrough came close to midnight Sunday night, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Sheikh Mohammed told the two Americans that the deal could be closed if Israel could make two more compromises, according to one of the people.

Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff walked together down the corridor to the Israelis’ room, where the negotiators were already on the phone with Mr. Netanyahu. When the Americans joined the call, the Americans told the Israeli leader that a deal could be reached if he agreed to slightly increase the number of prisoners involved in the swap, as well as slightly reduce the depth of the buffer zone.

After a loud debate in Hebrew between Mr. Netanyahu and his team, they made the compromise.

The Americans returned to update Sheikh Mohammed.

“We want a deal,” the Qatari leader told the envoys, according to the person familiar with the scene.

After a year of failure, around midnight on Sunday, they thought they had an agreement, subject to arguments over small final details.

Still, Wednesday brought more problems. With the news briefing scheduled for the evening, Hamas suddenly sought to reopen a discussion about how much land Israeli troops would continue to control along the Egyptian-Gaza border.

Then, after Egyptian and Qatari leaders persuaded Hamas to back down, Israel pushed for greater clarity on which Palestinian prisoners would be released.

Thousands of miles away, in the Oval Office, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, sat with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, waiting for news from Mr. McGurk.

Even when Sheikh Mohammed finally announced the deal on Wednesday night, the identities of the final prisoners were still being clarified by the two sides, according to a person familiar with the debate.

But Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff felt confident enough to inform their superiors that a truce would be reached, said a person familiar with the scene.

The latest argument continued into Thursday, when Mr. McGurk and Mr. Witkoff finally left Qatar that night.

The deal was cemented – and it was one of the most unlikely pairings in diplomatic history.

Aaron Boxerman and Ronen Bergman contributed with reporting.