The implementation of the ceasefire agreement and details around the humanitarian and ceasefire provisions, hostage release and prisoner exchange will be ironed out in a Thursday meeting in Cairo, a senior Biden administration official said on Wednesday evening.
The US, Egypt and Qatar will be "intensively engaged" on the implementation of the deal, according to the official.
"No doubt, not everything here is going to go smoothly," the official said. "But one reason we have such a detailed framework...is leaving very little chance, and making sure expectations are very clear on both sides, and we're hopeful that the implementation will go as smoothly as possible."
Israel knows which hostages are coming out in phase one and agreed to the prisoners who will also be released in those days, the official said, also explaining how the maps detailing where the IDF is permitted to go were scrutinized.
The official recounted the nearly eight-month-long process from when Biden announced the framework of the deal on May 31 to Wednesday when Israel and Hamas came to an agreement.
Fundamental rewriting
Hamas's response to Biden's May proposal on July 2 was a fundamental rewriting of the deal, the official said, which called for a complete ceasefire, all Israelis to leave Gaza and an "all for all" exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
No Israeli government would've accepted that deal, according to the official.
Hamas continued with that position throughout the summer, but the official said it was clear that military pressure on Hamas helped bring them back to the table.
The US felt it had traction in mid-August when it put down a joint mediator proposal with Egypt and Qatar fully accepted and endorsed by Israel.
"We had indications at the time that Hamas would also endorse that. And actually, we thought we had a chance in that mid-to-late August time period to reach an agreement," the official recounted. "You might recall that at the end of August, instead of Hamas agreeing to a deal, Yahya Sinwar, from inside, made clear he was not interested in the deal."
American-Israeli Hersh Polin Goldberg and five other hostages were killed in a tunnel underneath Rafa at the end of August, which the official said set back any effort to pursue a deal.
The US concluded that it would not reach a ceasefire and hostage deal as long as Sinwar was alive.
Come September, according to the official, Washington, in close consultation with the Israelis, "really shifted the strategic approach" with Israel focusing first on the north rather than focusing on the ceasefire hostage release deal in Gaza .
The US also came to understand a deal in Gaza would not be reached as long as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nazrallah was alive.
"Israel's campaign in Lebanon, needless to say, was extraordinarily successful," which the official said the Biden administration "supported in many ways."
The degradation and defeat of Hezbollah is what really led to the conditions allowing Israel and Hamas to reach the ceasefire agreement, the official noted.
The Oct. 16 death of Sinwar and Israel's Oct. 25 retaliatory attack on Iran destroying its strategic air defense helped open up the possibility of a return to the table for negotiations.
The Lebanon ceasefire went into effect on Nov. 27, which the official said changed the equation in the Middle East and served as a catalyst for returning to Gaza ceasefire negotiations.
"It is just impossible, and I'm speaking from the Middle East, to overstate how significantly this region has changed," the official noted. "Our adversaries are significantly weaker. Our partners and allies are significantly stronger."
According to the official, Israel has demonstrated it is probably the "most militarily effective capable and one of the most militarily powerful capable countries in the Middle East."
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan returned to Israel on Dec. 12 with Middle East envoy Brett McGurk for another meeting with Netanyahu and his team "talking through the new regional equation" and how to catapult from the Lebanon ceasefire into another round of Gaza talks. McGurk stayed in the region for more than a week after that meeting to "get those talks back on track."
"And that was met with some success, other than again, Hamas refusing to agree," the official explained. "This was a breakdown at that point, refusing to agree to the list of hostages that would be released in phase one of the deal."
The US "held the line" and left the table until Hamas agreed to the hostage list, the official said. Hamas came back and agreed to the hostage list after Christmas.
McGurk returned and has remained in the region since Jan. 5, the official noted, participating in sometimes 18-hour-long negotiations each day.
"We have worked to nail down every single issue in the ceasefire hostage release agreement," the official said, adding the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the hostages was not fully nailed down until a few hours before the agreement was announced.
Incoming Middle East envoy Steve Witcoff's partnership with McGurk over the last 96 hours "really began after Biden's meeting with Trump in the Oval Office" according to the official.
The official called the partnership "highly constructive and "historical, almost unprecedented."
"I think that speaks to what can be done in the country when you focus on a common objective, but the deal reached today, again, was the fruition of many months over a year of developments in the Middle East and extensive, extraordinary diplomacy," the official said.
While the official said a deadline is sometimes needed in diplomacy, the defeat of Hezbollah and massive isolation of Hamas was the catalyst for the deal, not Trump's imposed deadline of his inauguration and threat of "hell to pay" to Hamas.
The official acknowledged the Biden administration's claim that Hamas has recruited as many terrorists as Israel has killed throughout the war.
"Have they recruited poor gazians who are living in hell on earth, in Gaza? Yeah, but that is far cry from an organization that invaded Israel and military formations with 1000's of organized fighters on October 7," according to the official.
Before speaking to reporters, the official said he was on a "very warm call" between Biden and Netanyahu "marking this moment" and reflecting on the horror that Israel and the hostages have seen since Oct. 7.
"Prime Minister Netanyahu also remarked that he's known President Biden for 44 years," the official noted. "Which is hard to believe, but just the amount of the history these two men have seen together is quite extraordinary."