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By Tom O'Connor and Daniel Bush
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Israel and Hamas agreed to the hostage release terms of their ceasefire deal in the late hours of negotiation as both sides worked with the United States and other countries to hammer out final details of the agreement, according to a senior Biden administration official.
Both sides didn't agree on the final terms of a hostage release and prisoner exchange under the deal announced Tuesday until "recent hours," the official said during a briefing held shortly after President Joe Biden confirmed the deal had been reached.
"All that was not fully nailed down really until the recent hours," said the official, who spoke to reporters on background to discuss how the deal came together, adding that "it wasn't until this afternoon that we had full confidence is going to come together."
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Egypt and Qatar played a critical role alongside the U.S. in the final round of talks on a ceasefire deal that had eluded Israel and Hamas for more than a year, the official said.
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Steve Witkoff, President-elect Donald Trump's incoming Middle East envoy, also worked closely with senior Biden administration officials to finalize the agreement.
"It was a highly constructive, very fruitful partnership," the Biden administration official said of Witkoff's work on the last round of talks.
Trump was the first on the U.S. side to announce that a deal had been reached on Wednesday, shortly after a Hamas source confirmed to Newsweek that the two parties had reached an agreement. Further confirmation came from the governments of Egypt and Qatar, where Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani held a press conference attended by Biden and Trump's envoys in Doha to discuss the deal.
Israel has yet to formally announce the conclusion of a deal. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump during a phone call "for his assistance in advancing the release of the hostages and for helping Israel bring an end to the suffering of dozens of hostages and their families," according to a readout from the Israeli premier's office.
Earlier, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar cut short a trip to Europe in order to return to Israel in what his ministry said was the anticipation of votes being held in connection with progress on the ceasefire negotiations.
The Biden administration official said that the president closely monitored the talks in recent days as both sides made progress toward a final deal. Biden spoke with Netanyahu and Egypt's President Abel Fattah el-Sissi over the past week.
Biden congratulated Netanyahu for the deal during a call Wednesday in which the two "discussed the unimaginable conditions the hostages – including Americans - have experienced over their 15 months in captivity and the terrible suffering their families have faced, and expressed their joy that hostages will soon be reunited with their families," according to a White House readout.
The senior Biden administration official described the negotiations as "extremely complicated" due to the intricacies of establishing mutually agreed terms for releasing specific numbers of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
During his public remarks on Wednesday, Biden referred to the talks as "one of the toughest negotiations I've ever experienced" throughout his half-century career in government.
Of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas during its October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the conflict, 98 are believed to remain in the group's custody. Among them are seven U.S. citizens, three of whom are believed to be alive.
The senior Biden administration official told reporters Wednesday that two U.S. nationals, Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen, would be released in the first phase of the agreement that extends to captives who are women, elderly males as well as the sick and wounded.
A six-week ceasefire, a partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from population centers in Gaza and a surge in humanitarian aid to the war-torn Palestinian territory would also commence in the first phase, according to the proposal first outlined by Biden last May.
Follow-up negotiations would also begin toward the second and third phases of the agreement in order to achieve a lasting ceasefire, the return of the remaining living and dead hostages, the release of additional Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and reconstruction efforts.
This is a developing story that will be updated with additional information.
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