How the hostage deal came about: Negotiations stumbled, but persistence finally won out

The negotiations hardly ran smoothly. But in the end, persistence paid off.

Six weeks ago, not long after Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took scores of others hostage in a surprise assault, the government of Qatar quietly reached out to the United States to discuss how to release those who had been taken captive by the militant group.

But the mission demanded extreme sensitivity. It was so secret that U.S. officials established a communications cell to reach Hamas directly, and kept those negotiations tightly guarded throughout the U.S. government. Only a handful of people were aware of the talks, according to a senior White House official.

For weeks through the cell, which allowed the small circle of negotiators to speak regularly without additional bureaucracy, U.S. and Israeli officials would scramble to put together