US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met directly with senior Hamas official Khalil al-Khaya and other Hamas leaders at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Wednesday night to seal the hostage release and ceasefire deal, according to a report Monday.

Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, who writes for Channel 12 and the US Axios website, reported that the Qatari mediators urged the senior US officials to meet the terror leader in order to break a logjam in the talks.

Ravid wrote on Axios that, according to one source, Hamas leaders feared Israel would resume the war once the hostages were freed, and needed direct assurances that, provided Hamas kept to the deal, Trump wouldn’t let that happen.

Trump “had privately granted permission for Witkoff and Kushner to meet Hamas leaders if necessary to seal a deal” when he spoke with his envoys in the Oval Office ahead of their departure for Egypt, the report said.

Witkoff told Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators about Trump’s okay, and the meeting went ahead when the talks hit a deadlock, at around 11 p.m.

In the hotel room “were the Egyptian and Turkish intelligence chiefs, senior Qatari officials, and the four most senior Hamas leaders involved in the negotiations,” Ravid wrote.

“The Hamas team was led by Khalil al-Hayya, who had survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Doha three weeks earlier,” he added. Al-Hayya was the primary target of Israel’s September 9 airstrikes on the Hamas offices in the Qatari capital, which failed to kill him or any other top Hamas leaders.

During 45 minutes of talks, Witkoff contended to the Hamas representatives that the hostages were now “more of a liability than an asset for you,” and that it was time to implement the first phase of Trump’s plan for Gaza and “bring people home on both sides of the border.”

“President Trump’s message is that you will be treated fairly and that he stands behind all 20 points of his peace plan, and will make sure they are all implemented,” Witkoff reportedly said.

The Hamas leaders then conferred in a separate room with the Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators. Soon after, Egypt’s intel chief Hassan Rashad returned to tell Witkoff and Kushner: “Based on the meeting we just had, we have a deal.”

Shortly after that, Trump announced that the deal on the first phase was done.

This was the second time that US envoys had met directly with Hamas leaders during the war in Gaza, as hostage envoy Adam Boehler did early this year, in a move that sparked Israeli anger and led to his removal from the position.

Boehler’s direct talks, which were aimed largely at securing the release of dual US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander and four slain dual US-Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza, were completely coordinated with Witkoff, but Israel was not fully informed ahead of time.

Boehler sought to calm concerns in Israel over the talks with Hamas during a series of interviews, but his comments about identifying with “the human elements” of Hamas only served to infuriate Israel further.