Trump's Middle East envoy says he will be 'outside overseer' in Gaza

Steve Witkoff says he will be charged with monitoring the return of Palestinians to their neighbourhoods in the north during the first phase of the ceasefire agreement

US President Donald Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. AFP

President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said on Wednesday that he would be heading to Israel soon to be part of a team of “outside overseers” in and around the Gaza Strip to ensure that the terms of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are enacted according to the agreement.

Mr Witkoff's announcement is the first confirmation that US officials would be involved as inspectors inside Gaza to oversee the return of Palestinian civilians to the north. He did not say who would join him.

“I'm actually going to be going over to Israel,” Mr Witkoff told Fox News. “I'm going to be a part of an inspection team at the Netzarim corridor, and also at the Philadelphi corridor. 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.”

The Netzarim corridor is a strip of territory that the Israeli army carved across Gaza and it has prevented Palestinians from travelling between the north and south of the enclave. The Philadelphi corridor, also known as the Salah Al Din corridor, is a narrow strip along the border with Egypt.

A day before Mr Trump took office, Israel and Hamas reached a three-phased, ceasefire and hostage-release deal, pausing the 15-month war in Gaza.

Under the agreement, Israel must withdraw its troops from central Gaza and allow Palestinians to return to the north. Hostages will also be released in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. In the later stages, Israel will withdraw completely from the coastal enclave, which has been reduced to rubble, and Gaza will be rebuilt.

Mr Trump demanded that a deal be struck before he took office and in recent weeks sent Mr Witkoff to the talks held in Doha, mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt.

“Our job was to speed up the process because it felt like it had bogged down and so, that that was the job, and we were able to get it done,” Mr Witkoff said. “It's on track for the moment, and we'll see what happens next, in phase two, and on and on.”

But on Monday, Mr Trump said he was not confident in the ceasefire deal. He said he had seen pictures of Gaza and it looked like a “massive demolition site”. More than 47,100 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes and most residents have been displaced.

“I think that the implementation of it is probably more difficult than the execution of the deal, but the execution, that was a big step,” Mr Witkoff said.

He said the Trump administration is committed to ensuring that the implementation of the deal goes according to plan and that the remaining hostages come out alive.

Mr Witkoff added that reaching the ceasefire would create momentum that would pave the way to the expansion of the Abraham Accords in the region.

“I think that normalisation is an amazing opportunity for the region. It's basically the beginning of the end of war,” he said. “And the beginning of the end of war means that the entire region becomes investable, it becomes financeable.”

Mr Witkoff said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman's “communications skills with Hamas” were “indispensable”, and said Doha could eventually sign on to the accords.