Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet endorsed the first stage of a peace deal with Hamas, orchestrated by emissaries of President Donald Trump, the hard-line Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir vented his frustration about the agreement. Just a day earlier, Ben-Gvir led a group of Jewish worshippers in prayer on the Temple Mount, the flashpoint site in Jerusalem that also houses the Al Aqsa Mosque, and called for “total victory” in Gaza. Now he was sitting with his fellow ministers to discuss how to bring to an end two years of hostilities that had reduced much of Gaza to a charred wasteland—but had left Hamas still standing.

At Netanyahu’s invitation, both Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s friend and special envoy, were in attendance. They had traveled to Israel from the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, in Egypt, where they spent Wednesday toiling over a one-page document distilling the terms of an initial cease-fire and prisoner swap that could satisfy both Israel and Hamas.

Ben-Gvir turned to the two Americans and told them that they would never agree to such a deal for their own country—one that frees prisoners held for acts of violence against Israeli citizens and could eventually grant amnesty to members of a terrorist group responsible for the deadliest attack in the nation’s history. Witkoff, a New York real-estate investor tapped by Trump at the start of his second term to solve some of the world’s most intractable conflicts, responded by telling them how he forgave the family of the drug dealer responsible for selling the OxyContin that took his son’s life. The envoy seemed to be on the verge of tears, two people familiar with the exchange told us. Ben-Gvir was unmoved, saying the difference was that Hamas was unrepentant.

Read: Ben-Gvir can’t bring himself to pretend

Ultimately, the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the first phases of Trump’s plan—the pullback of the Israel Defense Forces and the return of all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. But the interaction captured how charged, and how personal, the path to possible peace has been for its key brokers,