‘Thank you Kushner! Thank you Trump!’: The chief negotiators of President Donald Trump’s peace plan were met with cheers at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv
“Thank you Witkoff! Thank you Trump!” Those were the cheers that could be heard in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square on Saturday evening as Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the chief negotiators of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, addressed a cheering crowd and praised the “amazing soldiers” of the IDF, saying that “without their heroism and brilliance and bravery, this deal would not be possible.”
“I couldn’t be more proud to see the way that the state of Israel and its people have carried themselves through this traumatic, unthinkable, horrific experience,” Kushner said. “Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, you chose to be exceptional.”
Kushner, who emerged as a leading figure in the deal after facilitating the Abraham Accords during the first Trump administration, said he would not be able to celebrate until Hamas officially releases the hostages, a transfer scheduled to take place on Monday. However, he said he hoped the hostage families would get the “closure they deserve and to end this nightmare.”
Hamas agreed to return the 48 remaining hostages—only 20 of whom are believed to be alive—after 737 days in captivity. In exchange, Israel agreed to release around 2,000 imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.
Kushner described how he cried while watching Hamas’s brutal attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, saying their “horrific barbaric acts shocked me to my core, in a way that I’ll never be the same.” Since then, he said, his “heart has not been complete” and there has been a “tremendous burden that I felt to see these hostages come home.”
Describing the talks as “very, very rocky,” Kushner joked that Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, “had no four letter words in his speech because I think he used them all up in the negotiation.”
Witkoff thanked President Trump, calling him a “humanitarian, through and through, with indomitable spirit, who once again proved that bold leadership and moral clarity can reshape history and change the world.”
He said Trump “showed the world that strength and peace go hand in hand. They are not opposites, they are partners.”
Witkoff addressed the hostage families directly, saying, “each and every one of you have carried the moral weight of this nation.”
