He was Donald Trump’s man in the room as the ceasefire and hostage release deal was forged between Israel and Hamas, but Steve Witkoff is no diplomat despite his appointment as the president-elect’s special envoy to the Middle East.
Instead, he brought to the negotiating table decades of experience clinching some of New York’s biggest real estate deals, as well as opening up about his very personal loss during the arduous talks.
Born in the Bronx, the billionaire real estate developer could hardly have a more different profile from those of the American diplomats who usually craft complicated international agreements. Witkoff, 67, was raised in Long Island and trained as a real estate lawyer before charting a path in the rough-and-tumble world of New York real estate development.
He has known Trump for decades, is a Republican donor and served on one of Trump’s Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups to combat the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. He’s also going to be one of the speakers at Trump’s pre-inauguration rally Sunday, alongside Hulk Hogan, Megyn Kelly, Elon Musk and others.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani made a clear reference to Witkoff, who is Jewish and has done business throughout the Middle East, during a Wednesday press conference confirming that a Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal had been reached.
“What we have seen from the U.S. in the past few days, seeing a collaboration transcending both administrations, was a clear demonstration for the commitment of the U.S. to reach to that deal,” Sheikh Mohammed, a key mediator in the talks, told the crowd of reporters and dignitaries, which included Witkoff himself. “And I really would like to thank both the envoys who are here with us in the last couple of days, and they played a vital role in reaching to this moment.”
A senior administration official close to the negotiations also told NBC News that Witkoff had been “very helpful, in particular ironing out a couple of issues” on the “very complex deal.” They added that he had been “working seamlessly” on the effort with Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
“I have to say, Brett McGurk has been very fortunate to have been joined in these last 96 hours by Steve Witkoff” in what “has really been a historic and crucial partnership between the two of them to help nail down some of the final arrangements,” the official said.
Witkoff brought “a new energy and a new dynamic” to the table, a person familiar with the negotiations said in a separate interview before the deal was announced. “He’s very much engaged and his heart is in the right place.”
A Middle Eastern diplomat who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity said Witkoff, as well as being a tough negotiator, talked about his son Andrew, who died of an OxyContin overdose in 2011 at age 22, telling “officials he empathizes with parents who have lost children on both sides.”
Neither Witkoff nor his office responded to requests for comment on this story.
The phased ceasefire caps more than a year of start-and-stop talks. It aims to halt fighting that has left Gaza in ruins, killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, shattered most of its hospitals and driven most of Gaza’s population from their homes. The 93 hostages held by Hamas would also be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, and large amounts of humanitarian aid would be shipped into the enclave.
There was little fanfare when Trump’s transition team announced Witkoff’s appointment in a short statement in November.
“Steve will be an unrelenting voice for PEACE, and make us all proud,” it said before a brief biography listing his business achievements.
Trump’s transition team did not specify what his role would entail, and it remains unclear whether it is a formal federal job, in which case he would be required to step down from the Witkoff Group, his privately held global real estate development and investment firm based in New York, which he runs with his son Alex Witkoff. He would also have to file a financial disclosure form detailing all of his holdings.
Golf buddies
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Trump and Witkoff were longtime golf buddies.
“Steve and I would be the two guys who would play Trump and somebody else, and lose,” he said, adding that the president-elect made the decision to appoint his friend after Witkoff broached the idea of working on the Middle East over lunch with the president-elect.
“That stunned me because I didn’t know he was that interested in the Mideast,” Graham told NBC News last week. “And Trump looked at me and said, ‘Well, a million people have tried. Let’s pick a nice guy who’s a smart guy.’”
Graham said Witkoff’s time spent working on the ceasefire deal came “at his own expense.”
When Trump started to talk to Witkoff about the job, Graham said, “he was very sensitive” and had pledged not to do “anything that the Biden administration didn’t find helpful.” He had become “good friends” with McGurk throughout the process.
Like Trump, Witkoff made his fortune in real estate in both New York and Florida. Like Trump, he brought family members — his wife, Lauren, and sons Alex and Zach — into the Witkoff Group.
Like Trump, Witkoff is an avid golfer, and he was on the president-elect’s course in West Palm Beach, Florida, during the apparent assassination attempt in September.
After the incident, Witkoff told NBC News he knew immediately that a series of loud “pops” was gunfire, and he praised the Secret Service for its quick response in getting Trump off the course in under 20 seconds.
Perhaps aware that some might question whether his business ties in the region allowed him to be impartial, Witkoff said at a December Bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi that he would take a step back from them.
“Everything will be in some sort of blind trust for the time being while I’m envoy for the president with a much more consequential job at this stage in my life,” Witkoff said at the conference.
In contrast, Eric Trump, the president-elect’s son whom Witkoff was traveling with, said he would take the opposite route and steer clear of politics. The two men then traveled to Saudi Arabia, where Witkoff had helped set up the crypto company the Trump Organization recently launched.
Since announcing his appointment, Trump has said little about Witkoff’s brief. But at a news conference in December, he praised Witkoff for a “fantastic job” and said he had been working “endlessly for months” to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas. Trump has also warned that if the hostages whom Hamas is still holding in Gaza are not released by his inauguration on Monday, “all hell will break out in the Middle East.”
Witkoff in turn was effusive about his boss, telling reporters that Trump’s “stature” and the “red lines he’s put out there” had helped push the talks forward. Trump, he said, “gives us a lot of authority to speak on his behalf, and he exhorts us to speak emphatically. And emphatically means, ‘You better do this.’”
This pressure reportedly allowed Witkoff to lean on the notoriously tough and canny Benjamin Netanyahu during talks and compel the Israeli prime minister to agree to a deal despite objections.
Witkoff’s approach undoubtedly helped them succeed at “one of the hardest things to negotiate,” said Nick Candy, a London-based property developer who knows Witkoff from Mar-a-Lago.
Candy, who, like Witkoff, has projects and business ties in the Middle East, said his charisma and fairness would help him in negotiations in the region.
“Some of my closest friends in the Gulf have already been to Mar-a-Lago to see Steve and the president. And they are very impressed,” he said.
