As US President Donald Trump returned to the White House in the early hours of Tuesday morning, even he appeared surprised by the scale of the popular welcome he received in the Middle East. Aboard Air Force One, he told reporters that his whirlwind visit to Israel and then Egypt had been “fantastic…a very important day, because nobody thought this was possible”.
But that is not entirely true. At least one man in the President’s inner circle embraced the impossible and then brought it to life. A man deeply underrated by the Washington foreign policy elites, who now find themselves profoundly embarrassed and – in some circles, shamed – by the successful return to Israel of all the remaining, living hostages from Gaza.
Witkoff and Jared Kushner clasp hands while being recognised in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament on Monday (Photo: Kenny Holston – Pool/Getty Images)When Steve Witkoff was first appointed Trump’s Special Envoy to both the Middle East and Ukraine, the US capital sniggered. His CV certainly did not suggest that the President’s friend and occasional business associate had the chops necessary to deal with hard-bitten men like President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Hamas leaders dedicated to Israel’s destruction. They would surely eat him for breakfast, the capital’s cognoscenti agreed. But over the past nine months, Witkoff has proved the cynics entirely wrong.
His friendship with Trump was forged in 1986, during a chance 3am encounter in a New York City delicatessen. The two men were buying sandwiches after working late, and Witkoff had no cash to pay for his ham-and-cheese. Trump paid for both of them, little imagining that four decades later they would be brokering a possibly historic peace deal in the Middle East.
Witkoff is the antithesis of the trained, elite foreign policy professionals who sat at the heart of the Biden administration. Where former Secretary of State Antony Blinken studied at Harvard and former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan went to Yale, Witkoff pursued politics and law degrees at Hofstra University in his native Long Island. His father was a clothing manufacturer and his mother worked as an interior designer. After graduating, he became a real estate lawyer, before going into the New York property business himself.
Ivanka Trump, daughter of President Trump, and husband Jared Kushner at the Gaza Peace Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday (Photo: Yoan Valat/ AP)He was so unprepared for the role he now plays in the Trump administration, that Witkoff has conceded he boned up on foreign affairs by watching documentaries on Netflix. That disclosure occurred during a May interview with The Atlantic, and it led to even greater mirth in Washington. The profile’s author, Isaac Stanley-Becker, concluded that Witkoff had “come to believe, as Trump did with politics, that he can turn a lack of expertise to his advantage and succeed where the professionals have failed”.
For months, Witkoff laboured away, even as seasoned commentators insisted he lacked the substance, the nuance and the historical knowledge needed to succeed. Of his numerous meetings in the Kremlin with Putin, William Taylor, the former US Ambasador to Ukraine, grumbled to The Atlantic that “the Russians are very skilled and very devious…he can be taken advantage of”.
Joe Biden’s US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (Photo: Lee Jin-man/Reuters)But describing himself as an “amateur diplomat”, Witkoff sought advice on the Middle East from a kitchen cabinet that included former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair and – as he indicated in a grateful social media post on Monday – Jonathan Powell, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s national security adviser.
It paid off, aided over the past week by the guidance of the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, another one of Trump’s “amateurs” lacking any of the qualifications previously deemed necessary for senior foreign policy gigs in the State Department or National Security Council.
In his speech to the Knesset, Trump gushed about both of them. Kushner, he said, had the “brain” needed to propel the phase one agreement between Israel and Hamas to its conclusion. On Monday night, the website Axios revealed that the process even included face-to-face meetings by the Americans with Hamas leaders in Sharm El-Sheikh last Wednesday night.
square PATRICK COCKBURN Netanyahu can't back out of the Gaza peace plan - Trump's ego will hold him to it
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Witkoff “started all this by himself”, Trump marvelled, portraying his special envoy as a Mr Everyman whose personality appeals even to the toughest of men. “Most importantly with Steve, he’s just a great guy. Everybody loves him…and they respect him and they somehow can relate to him”, he continued. “He’s a great negotiator, because he’s a great guy”, the president concluded, defining a new era of foreign policy that uses personality as a lever to force change.
Next up for the President’s “great guy”, continuing his efforts to try and seek a resolution to Russia’s war against Ukraine. “We’ve got to get that one done. If you don’t mind, Steve, let’s focus on Russia,” Trump instructed his envoy from the Knesset podium.
Putin will not be an easy nut to crack. But Biden, Sullivan, Blinken and all the other Washington veterans who consider themselves foreign policy experts, must accept that they have been schooled by a property developer with a Netflix account. Who among them now would count him out?
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