Leading the U.S. side was President Joe Biden's Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, who had been in the region since Jan. 5 working closely on what the official called a "very complex arrangement."
The agreement between Israel and Hamas got a big push across the finish line with Trump's repeated warnings there would be "hell to pay" in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas were not released before his Jan. 20 inauguration, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The deal gained momentum after Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire in November, and negotiations reached a boiling point over the last 96 hours, the administration official said.
A central obstacle was Hamas' refusal to acknowledge how many hostages it was holding or who among the hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal.
At the end of December, Hamas agreed to the list of hostages, which accelerated the final phase toward reaching a deal to free hostages in exchange for the release of some Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, the official said.
A long-sought Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal emerged at the end of an intense 96 hours of negotiations in Qatar.
The talks were brokered by U.S., Egyptian and Qatari diplomats.
A senior Biden administration official credited the presence of President-elect Donald Trump's incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, as being critical to reaching the agreement.
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