JERUSALEM — President Donald Trump's Mideast envoy on Friday will host top officials from Middle Eastern countries mediating the Gaza ceasefire, a State Department official said, in a bid to push the tenuous agreement into its next phase.
The envoy, Steve Witkoff, is Trump's key delegate for handling peace negotiations. He will meet in Miami with officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, said the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview a meeting that has not yet been publicly announced.
There, the officials will review the implementation of Phase 2 of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.
The U.S.-brokered truce took effect on Oct. 10, pausing more than two years of war.
In the first phase, Hamas returned the hostages it was holding while Israel returned thousands of Palestinian prisoners and allowed greater quantities of humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza. The ceasefire has since stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violations.
The second phase, one far more challenging, is supposed to involve the deployment of an international security force, an internationally supervised technocratic governing body for Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas and further Israeli troop withdrawals from the territory. The process is to be overseen by a ''Board of Peace'' chaired by President Donald Trump.
Neither the board nor the international force have yet assembled. Israel has expressed opposition to the potential participation of various countries, including Turkey.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry confirmed the participation of Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan at Friday's talks in Miami. The Qatari prime minister, who doubles as the country's foreign minister, said in an interview in Al Jazeera that he, too, would be joining the meeting.
