US special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet on Wednesday in Istanbul with a delegation of senior Hamas officials led by Khalil al-Hayya to discuss efforts to maintain the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza, an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.

It will be Witkoff’s second meeting with Hayya after the special envoy along with fellow top adviser to US President Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, met with senior members of Hamas’s ceasefire negotiating team hours before an agreement was inked in Egypt on October 9.

That meeting was said to have been critical in bringing the deal across the finish line, with Trump’s advisers assuring the Hamas leaders that the US would hold Israel to the terms of the deal as long as the terror group kept its side of the bargain.

In a joint interview alongside Kushner last month, Witkoff said he managed to connect with Hayya over their shared experience of losing a son.

Witkoff’s late son, Andrew, died at the age of 22 of an opioid overdose. Hayya’s son, Himam al-Hayya, was killed in the Israeli airstrike on Hamas headquarters in Doha on September 9, which failed to kill any of the senior Hamas leaders targeted in the strike.

“But when Steve and him spoke about their sons, it turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings kind........

© The Times of Israel