President Donald Trump’s historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas was brokered in a Miami mansion 1,000 miles from the halls of power in Washington D.C.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was in his $32.2million home on Miami’s Indian Creek, often referred to as ‘Billionaire Bunker,’ when he learned Hamas was open to releasing Israeli hostages held captive since the October 7 attacks.
After taking part in weeks of intense, high stakes negotiations with all the major players in the war – Kushner knew it was time to act.
He immediately drove 20 minutes down to Sunset Island, where fellow real estate developer-turned-Trump administration negotiator Steve Witkoff lives.
In Witkoff’s $19 million home, which he purchased in 2019, the duo turned a wealthy Florida enclave into a diplomatic command center, securing hard-fought peace in the Middle East and delivering Trump an historic political win.
From the Florida bunker, the pair both made and received calls from stakeholders and key figures in the agreement, including Trump himself and cabinet members from the Israeli government.
Speaking to The New York Times, Kushner said his priority was convincing Israel to consider the positives in Hamas’ statement, rather than focusing on how much further they still had to go to secure lasting peace.
‘Steve and I said to Israel, “We encourage you to be positive as well,”‘ he said.
Hamas had agreed to discussions which would see the hostages freed, but had not yet indicated its position on giving up its weapons or political control of Gaza.
Within hours of Witkoff and Kushner’s message reaching Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to begin phase one of Trump’s broader peace plan.
Once the plan was in motion, Kushner and Witkoff boarded a plane to Egypt, discussing on the flight all the ways the deal could still go south and the methods they’d use to salvage it.
An administration insider with knowledge of the deal told Daily Mail it would have been ‘impossible’ to hammer out those final details without being on the ground in the Middle East.
By the time they arrived in Egypt, it was 6.30am Wednesday morning. They rushed straight into the high stakes negotiations, and had a deal done by about 2.30am.
Despite running on ‘about five hours of sleep in three days’ between both of them, Witkoff and Kushner sensed a shift on both sides toward the middle.
‘[They] began to sense, everybody had moved to a place in the middle where… there was a deal here,’ the insider said.
‘This has been a really dark cloud over the Middle East and I think everyone’s very excited to move forward.’
Kushner, a real estate developer who cut his teeth in New York, compared the back and forth in global negotiations to his work in the city.
‘There’s a lot to be negotiated before you get the contract and you put money up hard. I think we’re just used to complex deals that are very dynamic, and with complex characters as well,’ he said.
‘The experience that Steve and I have as deal guys is that you have to understand people. You have to be able to kind of get the bottom line out of them, and then see who do you think is playing games, and how much room do you have to push things?’
Trump confirmed the deal had been agreed to in a Truth Social post on Wednesday night, writing: ‘Israel will withdraw their Troops to an agreed upon line as the first steps toward a Strong, Durable, and Everlasting Peace.
‘All Parties will be treated fairly! This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America, and we thank the mediators from Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey, who worked with us to make this Historic and Unprecedented Event happen. BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!’
Trump confirmed the remaining hostages, believed to number around 20 survivors, will be released to Israel on Monday or Tuesday.
‘I’ll be there,’ Trump confirmed at a meeting with the Finland PM in the Oval Office. It came just hours after Hamas declared an end to the war.
‘Getting them [the hostages] is a complicated process. I would rather not tell you what they have to do to get them. There are places you don’t want to be.’
Chief Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said earlier: ‘We have received assurances from the brotherly mediators and the US administration, who have confirmed that the war is completely over.’
He promised that 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel would be freed, alongside 1,700 Palestinians from Gaza who were arrested since the war began.
Hamas slaughtered about 1,200 people during an October 7 ambush on Israel, taking about 250 hostages in the process.
Since then, more than 67,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing war and efforts to release the hostages from Gaza.
After the deal was made, Witkoff and Kushner flew from Egypt to Jerusalem to attend a cabinet meeting with Israeli officials.
One source with knowledge of the meeting said they were greeted with mass applause.
‘Everybody started clapping… I think they were acknowledging that they were the emissary of the President,’ the insider said.
‘Trump is very popular in the state of Israel for all the obvious reasons.’
Details of the meeting which were leaked to The Jerusalem Post indicated it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Witkoff and Kushner even when they arrived in Israel.
They were met with staunch opposition from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a right-wing deal who staunchly opposed the deal the duo had worked so tirelessly to secure.
Ben-Gvir argued the Palestinians they have in custody include ‘baby killers’ and ‘women’s rapists’, noting the United States would never release prisoners they had in custody with similar convictions.
He said peace with Hamas is ‘impossible’, asking the duo: ‘Would you have made peace with Hitler? Hamas is Hitler. They want to murder us.’
Witkoff allegedly responded by sharing a story of the moment he chose to forgive a drug dealer who caused the death of his 22-year-old son back in 2011.
According to the publication, he shared that he saw the drug dealer’s parents in court, and in that moment chose forgiveness.
‘Mr. Witkoff, that’s the difference: those who murdered us on October 7th aren’t asking for forgiveness. Their families are proud of it. They want to kill Jews,’ Ben-Gvir responded.
Kushner argued that the deal ‘encourages actors in the Arab world to pursue peace, [and] ensures Israel’s security.
‘If we need to act with force, we will. It will either happen the easy way or the hard way.’
The father-of-three was relieved to be returning home to his wife, Ivanka Trump, and family after the deal.
The duo had committed to having a less integral role in Trump’s administration this time around, after being at the forefront of political life during his first term.
‘He’ll always be there to help those were serving, especially in the in the pursuit of peace,’ an insider said.
