Trump speaking at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort reiterated his threat that there will be “hell to pay” in the Middle East if the Israeli captives held in Gaza are not released prior to his 20 January inauguration.

Witkoff, who also spoke briefly at the press conference, said he expected to depart for Qatar later Tuesday or Wednesday but did not detail who he’d be meeting with during his latest visit to the region, as reported by AP.

Witkoff added that progress is being made on landing a deal, something he said is happening because of the pressure Trump is creating.

“The red lines he’s put out there — that’s driving this negotiation,” Witkoff said.

"I think that we've had some really great progress, and I'm really hopeful that by the inaugural, we'll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president," he added.

In Doha, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari said that the technical delegations for the Gaza ceasefire negotiations are meeting regularly, whether in Doha or Cairo, as the mediation efforts are ongoing.

If an agreement is reached, it will be officially announced, the spokesman added.

An eight-day round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas during the last week of December didn't lead to a breakthrough.

US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators said they managed to make some progress but not enough to get a deal.

Last Friday, Israeli negotiators returned to Doha for another round of talks with the mediators.

Biden's top Middle East adviser Brett McGurk also joined the talks on Sunday, according to Axios. A US official said McGurk and Witkoff talk regularly and the discussions are constructive.

An Israeli official told Axios that gaps remain between Israel and Hamas on almost all of the issues being negotiated.

He said that while it is going to be very hard to reach a deal by 20 January, there is "cautious optimism" that a deal could be reached in the next few weeks.

Already live in hell

Hamas official Osama Hamdan said on Tuesday that the group are not afraid of Trump's threats "because Palestinians already live in hell" in Gaza.

At a press conference in Algeria, Hamadan said he doesn't think a deal will be reached by 20 January, asserting that Israel is responsible for undermining all efforts to reach an agreement.

He added that Hamas would not provide details about the latest round of negotiations. Still, he stressed Hamas' condition of "a complete cessation of Israeli aggression on Gaza and a comprehensive withdrawal from the lands invaded by the occupation."

Another Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi told the al-Mayadeen television network on Monday that the ball now is in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamen Netanyahu's court and reiterated Hamas' position that any deal would need to include an end to the war on Gaza and full Israeli withdrawal.

 US and Israeli officials told Axios that Hamas' top military leader in Gaza — Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar — doesn't seem to be deterred by Trump's threat.

The officials said Sinwar refuses to provide a list that clarifies which captives would be released in the first phase of the deal — which includes women, men over the age of 50, and men under the age of 50 who are in a serious medical condition.