Kushner meets Netanyahu in Jerusalem after two-hour talks with Hamas chief in Egypt
Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and envoy, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday, accompanied by Board of Peace Director Nickolay Mladenov and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The meeting followed Kushner's Sunday discussion in Egypt with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya, which lasted over two hours and included officials from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey. The central dispute concerns a 15-point U.S.-backed road map: Hamas says it has accepted the plan but wants Israel to halt military operations first, while Israel insists Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal.
Kushner's Jerusalem meeting was the latest move in a sequence of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reviving a stalled Gaza peace road map that Trump announced as a breakthrough in late July. The 15-point plan calls for Hamas to disarm and Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, but the two sides disagree sharply on sequencing. Hamas says Israel must end its military campaign as a first step; Israel has called for Hamas's complete disarmament as a prerequisite for any withdrawal.
The Sunday meeting in Cairo brought Kushner together with Hamas's new leader, Khalil al-Hayya, for more than two hours, according to a regional official and a Hamas official cited by the Associated Press. A Hamas official told the Washington Post that the group's talks with Kushner focused on the 15-point plan, which Hamas has accepted, and on its objections to Israel's position. Al-Hayya demanded that Israel halt attacks and withdraw to the so-called "yellow line" dividing the territory before implementation begins, according to the AP. Israeli forces currently control approximately 60 percent of Gaza, having moved beyond that line; in May, Netanyahu said Israel's next step was to move to 70 percent control.
The road map hit a significant obstacle last week when Netanyahu publicly voiced opposition to it — a rare break with Washington. A U.S. official told the Washington Post that Israel is not being asked to "rely on trust or to make irreversible moves before verified steps are taken on the ground," adding that the objective "remains the full decommissioning of weapons and ensuring Gaza can never again pose the kind of threat Israel faced on October 7." The Board of Peace official said the aim of Monday's meeting was to hear concerns from the Israeli side and find a way to move forward.