Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, acknowledged on Thursday that advancing the second phase of the Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage-release deal was proving to be “more difficult” than phase one because of Israel’s need to ensure that Hamas does not govern the Gaza Strip moving forward.

Witkoff made the comments while appearing alongside Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and an architect of the Abraham Accords during the first Trump administration, at the Future Investment Initiative Institute’s annual summit, which is taking place in Miami this week. 

Witkoff began by explaining that the two sides “were talking past one another in that first phase,” during which Hamas was “not at the table.” While Hamas and Israel have continued to negotiate only through intermediaries, rather than directly, Witkoff said that the talks advanced thanks to a push for dialogue while reframing the hostage and prisoner releases as a positive thing for all parties involved.

“You know the real estate business, it’s like a closing. At the table, you’ve got to get people talking to each other and with each other,” Witkoff told Kushner onstage, adding that “there were built-in barriers to getting a deal done. … It’s not easy to work in an environment like that. But ultimately, I think we were able to together — Brett McGurk was great for the Biden administration, we worked collaboratively — we were able to convince people that a hostage release was a good thing.”

“Phase two is more difficult,” Witkoff told Kushner. “But I think ultimately, if we work hard, that there’s a real chance of success. I think everybody is buying into this notion that releasing hostages is just a good thing. It just is something that’s important and that ought to happen.”

“The issue with phase two is that there’s supposed to be an end to the war as part of phase two, and I think the Israelis have a red line, which is, you can’t have Hamas in the government,” he continued. “So it’s hard to sort of square that circle, but we’re making a lot of progress in the conversations, and hopefully it will lead to some good things, good results.”

Kushner repeatedly praised Witkoff, whom he described as “one of the people I looked up to” when he was coming up in the New York real estate world, for his work getting hostages released from Gaza and Russia since taking on the envoy role. Witkoff credited Kushner with having “convinced” him to join the Trump administration, later jokingly describing Kushner as his “rebbe.”

Describing media coverage of some of his meetings, Witkoff said, “I have to take the advice from you, which is, always, ‘don’t care about the media.’ So that’s liberating, because I have you, the rebbe, telling me that.”

Witkoff’s comments came as Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke to CNN about the status of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and the ongoing hostage releases in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. 

Asked how he squares the issue of Hamas using the hostages as leverage to prolong their own time in power, Herzog expressed confidence that Trump’s unconventional approach to foreign policy was going to yield results. 

“If you look at the recent weeks, a lot of things have happened,” Herzog said. “I must commend President Trump for shaking everybody’s rusty thoughts and explaining to all that this reality must change, meaning we cannot repeat time and again the same paradigm of terror attack, war, pain, bloodshed, and et cetera, et cetera. We have to change it. That is why we have to think with new plans and new ideas.”

“We do expect our Arab neighbors and partners for peace, both Jordan, Egypt and the Abraham Accords countries, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, others, and hopefully even Saudi Arabia to come forward with a major plan that will be a basis for a dialogue to see how we make sure that Hamas is out and the people of Gaza have a better future,” he added.