US President Donald Trump's envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff discussed the negotiations leading to the Trump Peace Deal, as well as the recent Israeli strike in Doha, and the emotional return of the hostages in an exclusive 60 Minutes interview with CBS which aired on Sunday.
Filmed just days before Hamas broke the truce with an anti-tank attack, the interview remains strikingly relevant.
As Trump’s envoys and mediators, the two shared behind-the-scenes details of the ceasefire talks, from their “shock and sense of betrayal” over the Doha strike to their visit to Gaza, where they described the relief of seeing the hostages come home.
Israel was 'losing control'
They said the strike left them feeling deceived and noted that Trump believed Israel was “losing control,” a comment that defined much of the discussion. Kushner and Witkoff are expected back in Israel on Monday to help ensure the ceasefire holds and to advance “Phase B” of the plan.
When asked whether Hamas was upholding the agreement, Kushner told Stahl, “First of all, it's the Middle East, so everyone complains about everything.” He went on, “As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed to us from the mediators, they are so far. That could break down at any minute, but right now, we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.”
Stahl pressed further, adding, “Hamas now is using weapons to execute people that they perceive as their enemies in Gaza. And they're also using their weapons to reestablish themselves as the entity that is governing Gaza. They're moving into the vacuum.”
Kushner replied, “Hamas right now is doing exactly what you would expect a terrorist organization to do, which is to try to reconstitute and take back their positions. The success or failure of this will depend on whether Israel and this international mechanism are able to create a viable alternative. If they are successful, Hamas will fail, and Gaza will not be a threat to Israel in the future.”
Qataris were critical to the negotiation
The interview also covered the issue of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology at the White House in the presence of the Qatari prime minister, while Trump looked on, executing what was agreed upon. Kushner remarked that the leader of Qatar “felt that we weren't acting in his long-term interests.”
Witkoff added, “By the way, it had a metastasizing effect because the Qataris were critical to the negotiation, as were the Egyptians and the Turks. And we had lost the confidence of the Qataris. And so Hamas went underground, and it was very, very difficult to get to them.”
Stahl asked, “You were dealing through the Qataris to make your proposals to Hamas.”
Witkoff replied, “Absolutely… and it became very, very evident as to how important and how critical that role was.”
A forced apology?
Stahl then asked about Trump’s call to Netanyahu after the Doha strike, saying, “But there was something that happened that brought the Qataris back in. And that was this phone call that I think President Trump actually forced Netanyahu to make to the Qataris.”
Witkoff hesitated, “I wouldn’t say ‘forced.’” He continued, “The apology needed to happen. It just did. We were not moving forward without that apology. And the president said to him, 'People apologize.' I remember him saying, 'I apologize sometimes.' I'm talking about President Trump.”
Shifting Hamas's perspective
Later in the interview, Witkoff described how he and Kushner pushed negotiations forward by shifting Hamas’s perspective on what the hostages were worth to them. He said, “...the notion was to convince everybody that those 20 Israeli hostages who were alive were no longer assets for Hamas. They were a liability.”
Stahl asked how they had become a liability for Hamas.
Kushner responded, “What did Hamas gain by keeping these hostages? You had tens of thousands of Palestinians who were killed in these wars. You have half of Gaza, or more than half of it, absolutely destroyed. And so what's been the gain?”
The face to face negoiation
The conversation went on to discuss one of the biggest changes in the peace negotiation strategy. For the first time during the mediation process, Kushner and Witkoff received Trump’s approval to speak directly with Khalil al-Hayya, head of Hamas’s negotiating delegation, who was among those targeted in the Doha strike and lost his son in the blast. The intent was to show Hamas that Trump personally guaranteed the agreement moving forward.
Witkoff recounted, “We told him we stand behind this deal. We won’t allow either side to violate it. Both will be treated fairly.” He went on, “We offered condolences. I told him I’d also lost a son, we’re both fathers who buried our children.” (Witkoff’s son, Andrew, died of an overdose at 22.)
Kushner spoke on the shared moment of grief, recalling, “When Steve and him (Khalil al-Hayya) spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind of showing a vulnerability with each other.”
Stahl asked if it was true that once the deal was agreed upon, the Israelis and the Qataris began to hug each other, and Kushner smiled. “Absolutely, and I thought to myself, I wish the world could see that,” he said.
Gaza-"It looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off"
Kushner and Witkoff also described their visit to Gaza with IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi’s deputy, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir. “It looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off,” Kushner said. “People were walking back to where their homes used to stand, pitching tents. It was heartbreaking. They have nowhere to go.”
When Stahl asked, now having experience on the ground, if the pair would call the Israeli actions genocidal, Witkoff answered strongly, stating, “No, absolutely not. It was a war.”
Witkoff was also asked about the booing Netanyahu received at a Hostages’ Square rally. He said he didn’t share the opinion of the crowd: “I think he (Netanyahu) steered his country through some really difficult circumstances.”
Stahl countered, saying, “People think that he prolonged the incarceration of the hostages for his own political future.”
Witkoff replied that he didn’t believe that’s true.
Business with the Gulf states
Stahl then turned her questioning toward a more personal controversy for Witkoff and Kushner. She said, “So, you have both done a lot of business with the Gulf states, billions and billions of dollars’ worth of business. And you've done some of the business while this negotiation has gone on, and that has raised some issues of conflict. I mean, some blurring of a line between what you're doing in terms of foreign policy and benefiting financially from what's going on.”
Kushner responded, “...nobody's pointed out any instances where Steve or I have pursued any policies or done anything that have not been in the interest of America.” Witkoff added that he isn’t in business anymore.
Stahl pushed back, saying, “But your family is,” and Witkoff responded, “I’ve cut myself off. I take no salary. I fund everything myself.”
Kushner concluded that line of questioning, saying, “What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world. If Steve and I didn't have these deep relationships, the deal we were able to get done that freed these hostages would not have occurred.”
Coming home
When Stahl asked Witkoff how he felt watching the hostages come home a week earlier, Witkoff said, “Elated. Elated. And I was thinking to myself, 'What would I have felt like when I got the call from Cedars-Sinai Hospital that my son had died?' If the call from them was, 'He didn't die… we revived him,' and these people were all getting that type of call."
"Their kids were coming home.”