The negotiations that led to the Hamas Israel ceasefire agreement took months and months.

In the room and at the center of the talks, representing the United States, was Brett McGur.

White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.

He joins me now.

Brett, welcome to the News Hour.

Thanks for being with us.

Thanks so much for having me.

So you have been on the front lines of these efforts to end this war.

Take us inside the negotiations, if you can.

At any point over the last several months, did you just worry you were never going to get to a deal?

The president laid out this framework in May, at the end of May, and the Israelis agreed to it. And in August, we actually

thought we were getting close to a deal. The U.S., Egypt, and Qatar, we put together, we called

a mediator proposal, to try to bridge some differences. I have to say Hamas never accepted

the deal. Hamas never agreed to release hostages other than solely on its terms,

which was basically for the Israeli forces to totally leave Gaza, permanent ceasefire,

and go back to October 6, kind of bygones be bygones, and no Israeli government was going to do that.

And then we had six hostages killed in a tunnel underneath southern Gaza, underneath Rafah,

including an American Hirsch Goldberg.

And we pretty much concluded that with the current leadership of Hamas, and given the regional

situation at the time in which Hamas believed that a multi-front war that had been opened

up against Israel with the behest of Iran, it was not going to do a deal.

So we had to change the equation and that's really what we did.

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