Witkoff, Kushner visit Gaza ahead of Hamas hostage release
The U.S. delegation also included CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper.
JNS
Oct 12, 2025
U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner toured the Gaza Strip with the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday, ahead of the expected return of the hostages held by Hamas terrorists there, the military confirmed.
The U.S. delegation, which also included CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper, was accompanied by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and later observed the military’s preparations for the hostage return operation.
Zamir and Cooper met with senior Israeli commanders focused on the operational situation across “near and distant arenas,” as well as Jerusalem’s operations along the ceasefire lines in the Gaza Strip.
“This meeting serves as another reinforcement of the close, strategic and operational relationship between the IDF and the U.S. military,” the IDF said.
The IDF added that, as part of ongoing coordination efforts, it has remained in “continuous contact” with CENTCOM regarding the implementation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Gaza deal, “in a manner that ensures the continued security of the State of Israel.”
According to Fox News, the U.S. officials visited soldiers inside a military position in Gaza to confirm Jerusalem held up its part of the agreement and withdrawn to the agreed readiness limits, known as the “yellow line,” which leaves the IDF in control of roughly 53% of the coastal enclave.
Early on Friday morning, the Israeli Cabinet approved the first stage of the U.S.-brokered plan aimed at ending the war in Gaza and securing the return of the 48 hostages held in Hamas captivity.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Palestinian terrorist organization has committed to freeing all hostages, living and dead, within 72 hours.
CENTCOM confirmed on Friday that the IDF “completed the first phase withdrawal to the yellow line at 12 p.m. local time,” Witkoff wrote on X, adding that “the 72-hour period to release the hostages has begun.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday spoke with Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, his point man for the captives and missing, and told him that Jerusalem was “prepared and ready to immediately receive all of our hostages,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the wake of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of some 1,200 people in the northwestern Negev, in which terrorists also took 251 hostages, the Israel Defense Forces embarked on a 24-month-long aerial and ground campaign against the Iranian-backed organization.
Jerusalem’s goals for the war in the Strip were to eradicate Hamas as a military and political power, bring all of the captives home, and prevent the enclave from reemerging as a threat to Israel in the future.
On Thursday, Prime Minister’s Office spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian declared that through the U.S.-brokered deal with the terrorist group, “all of the prime minister’s objectives have now been achieved.”
After the first phase is completed, Trump’s 20-point plan is to move to a second phase, in which Gaza is to be de-radicalized and demilitarized.
Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday that he instructed the military to prepare for the destruction of Hamas’s terror tunnels, calling it the “main meaning of implementing the agreed-upon principle of demilitarizing Gaza and disarming Hamas.”
The extensive network of tunnels will be destroyed “directly by the IDF and through the international mechanism that will be established under the leadership and supervision of the U.S.,” said Katz.
Brig. Gen. Guy Levy, commander of the IDF’s 98th Paratroopers Division, aka the Fire Formation, which spearheaded operations in the northern Strip in recent weeks, told soldiers on Friday that the military remained “ready for action until all our hostages return.
“This is a historic moment, crucial hours of strength, of mission and of victory,” Levy told soldiers at a redeployment ceremony. “We operated with determination and ingenuity in order to reach the point where we fulfill the commandment: ‘Your children shall return to their borders.'”
The Jewish people are ” entering days in which your steadfastness in the military mission enables us to achieve our national goals, as people, as a state,” he continued. “Know that you are the heroes of victory; together, we will continue to fulfill every mission required of us.”
Speaking at the same ceremony, the head of the Commando Brigade, Col. M., said, “We have proven … that even from the deepest and most painful point of fracture, we can find within ourselves the strength to rise and overcome.
“Operation after operation, arena after arena, step by step, with precision, steadiness and operating toward our goal, the commando units moved from one operational mission to another,” M. continued.
“Over the past two years, we have rebuilt the people’s trust in us, in the IDF’s soldiers and commanders, their trust and their love,” he said
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