Immediately after the October 7 attack on Israel, a secret cell was set up to release approximately 240 hostages held by Hamas.

That began an "extremely excruciating five-week process" involving four countries, involving coordination among spymasters and a high-stakes presidential convocation, a senior U.S. official said.

Israel and Hamas have now agreed to release 50 Israeli women and children during a four-day cessation of fighting in exchange for 150 other Palestinian prisoners, also women and children.

After the landmark deal was announced, officials explained to journalists how it happened.

He said Qatar is spearheading this effort and has approached Israel and the United States with a proposal to establish a cellular organization that would quietly and passionately work on the issue. Doha served as the main route to Hamas, but Egypt also became part of the complex negotiating arrangement.

The first breakthrough occurred on October 23, when Hamas released two American women. This was a "pilot" project and "proved the concept," administration officials said.

After that, work began in earnest for a larger release.

Israel commissioned Mossad Director David Balnea as its negotiator, and he regularly consulted with CIA Director Bill Burns on the outline of the agreement.

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The process was painfully long as messages had to be passed from Doha or Cairo to Hamas in Gaza and then back again Ta. The talks were highly technical, hammering out details such as corridors, surveillance, duration and total numbers.

Administration officials said President Joe Biden has been "directly and personally" involved, including summoning the leaders of Israel and Qatar at key times.

The official made it clear that Israel had no intention of stopping the attack for any other purpose, and Biden called the hostage deal "the only realistic path to securing a humanitarian cessation of fighting for several days." He said he was looking at it.

This calculation is part of the agreement, which proposes extending the cessation of hostages if Hamas releases more hostages.

"We are also confident that more women and children will come out because we are in a hiatus," the US official said.
One impasse was that Hamas could not clearly identify who would be in the first group of 50 people. President Biden finally provided the information when he called the emir of Qatar and told him this was a violation of the agreement, the official said. Just when it looked like a deal was close in mid-November, communications with Hamas "hit a dead end" and everything stalled, he said. Although he did not provide details, it was also around this time that Gaza ran out of fuel. Administration officials said Israeli and U.S. distrust of Hamas was so high that even after communications were restored, it still took time to close the gaps in the highly detailed agreement. He sidestepped questions about whether the hostage deal and the negotiating route it brokered provided a path to ending the war. But regarding the hostages, he said: "What I have said over the past five weeks will not stop. As we move through this initial phase, we are determined to bring everyone home."