Witkoff to host new Gaza talks as Israel-Hamas ceasefire appears stalled

JERUSALEM — President Donald Trump's Mideast envoy on Friday will host top officials from Middle Eastern countries mediating the Gaza ceasefire, a State Department official said, in a bid to push the tenuous agreement into its next phase. The envoy, Steve Witkoff, is Trump's key delegate for handling peace negotiations. He will meet in Miami with officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, said the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview a meeting that has not yet been publicly announced. There, the officials will review the implementation of Phase 2 of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The U.S.-brokered truce took effect on Oct. 10, pausing more than two years of war. In the first phase, Hamas returned the hostages it was holding while Israel returned thousands of Palestinian prisoners and allowed greater quantities of humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza. The ceasefire has since stalled, with both sides accusing each other of violations. The second phase, one far more challenging , is supposed to involve the deployment of an internation