WASHINGTON: He has no foreign policy experience but sports a reputation as a talented negotiator unafraid to speak his mind. And Donald Trump’s special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff has already made his mark.
A close friend to the US president, 67-year-old real estate magnate Witkoff is credited with playing a key role in negotiating the ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas armed group.
The truce took effect January 19, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration for a second term in the White House.
This week, Witkoff found himself in the spotlight, defending the US president’s stunning suggestion that he wanted to “take over” the Gaza Strip and move its two million Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere.
“When the president talks about cleaning it out, he talks about making it habitable, and this is a long-range plan,” Witkoff told reporters at the White House just ahead of a joint news conference by Trump and visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“And this guy knows real estate,” National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, appearing alongside the special envoy, said with a smile.
Speaking later that day on Fox News, Witkoff continued laying out the administration’s justification for the notion of a large-scale relocation of Palestinians from Gaza — even as the idea drew fire in the region, with some calling it tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
“A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you’re in today,” he said, seeming to gloss over the complexities of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump had nothing but praise for Witkoff at the White House news conference.
“Steve, stand up, Steve, please. What a job you’ve done. Quite a good job. You’ve done a fantastic job,” he said.
It was Witkoff, a billionaire like his friend and a regular golfing partner of his, who was called on to introduce the new president at a celebratory gathering at a Washington arena following his January 20 inauguration.
Though a complete neophyte in the world of diplomacy, Witkoff was named as special envoy to the Middle East only a week after Trump’s election, a reflection of the two men’s close relationship.
Eight years earlier, after Trump was elected for his first term, he named another diplomatic novice — his son-in-law Jared Kushner — to the same position.
Even before Trump took office, Witkoff joined in the Gaza ceasefire talks, taking part in a final round of negotiations in early January alongside Brett McGurk, the Middle East adviser to then-president Joe Biden.
It was a rare collaboration between an outgoing and incoming US administration.
After attending the talks in the Qatari capital of Doha, Witkoff flew to Israel on a Saturday — interrupting Netanyahu on the Jewish Sabbath — in an urgent bid to finalize an agreement.
Then on January 29, Witkoff traveled to Gaza, much of which has been reduced to rubble after 15 months of an Israeli offensive launched in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack.
He was the first US official to visit the territory since the war began.
In an article published Thursday by Foreign Policy journal, Steven Cook, an expert with the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Witkoff’s lack of diplomatic experience could be an advantage, giving him a fresh perspective.
Still, he added: “The Israel-Palestine conflict is not a real estate deal.”
Born on March 15, 1957, in the New York borough of the Bronx, Witkoff made his fortune in real estate, first as a corporate lawyer and then at the head of big realty firms.
In 1997, he founded the Witkoff Group, which describes itself as “one part developer, one part investor (and) one part landscape-changer.” His wife and a son work there.
A graduate of Hofstra University near New York, Witkoff has several children, including one who died in 2011, aged 22, from an OxyContin overdose.
