Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and Middle East envoy, arrived in Israel on Monday to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a stalled Gaza peace plan, a day after holding a rare direct meeting with Hamas's top leader in Egypt. The talks mark the most senior contact between the Trump administration and Hamas since the group's new leadership took over last year, and they come at a moment when the wider ceasefire effort is at risk of collapse.
A Palestinian official told the BBC that Kushner met a Hamas delegation led by its new chief, Khalil al-Hayya, in the Egyptian city of El-Alamein on Sunday. Also in the room were US envoy Steve Witkoff, Board of Peace officials Nickolay Mladenov and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and representatives of mediators Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. According to a source who spoke to NPR, the discussion centered on "beginning to transfer all governing responsibilities" to a new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, disarming Hamas, withdrawing Israeli troops and deploying an international stabilizing force. No official transcript or joint statement has been released.
The stakes are laid out in the numbers. More than 2 million people live in Gaza, and roughly ten months have passed since the ceasefire ended the heaviest fighting. Israeli forces currently hold an estimated 60% of the territory; Netanyahu has previously said 70% is his next target if talks stall. Hamas said two weeks ago that it would hand over weapons to the new governing committee, a concession Kushner is now trying to convert into a verifiable disarmament process — Netanyahu's central demand.
A plan Israel has already rejected
The trouble is that Israel has formally rejected the document Kushner is trying to save. On August 9, Netanyahu told his cabinet, "I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document," according to NPR's reporting on the meeting. He has repeated the line since, telling reporters last week, "The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed" — a direct rebuff of a roadmap championed by Israel's closest ally.
Trump's Board of Peace, which he leads, was originally created to guide Gaza's postwar reconstruction and has since been expanded to cover other conflicts. Netanyahu is also boxed in domestically: he faces a difficult election in October, and his coalition includes ministers pushing for a harder line. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has said "I disagree with the prime minister" on scaling back operations, argued in a podcast interview that aired last week — reported by the Associated Press and the Financial Times — for intensified strikes on Gaza, comments that drew immediate domestic backlash and underscored how little room Netanyahu has to maneuver toward a deal.
Eight Muslim-majority nations — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — responded to the impasse with a joint statement on Sunday declaring that Israel's rejection "confirmed that it now bore responsibility for obstructing efforts to bring peace to Gaza," according to reporting from the region. Hamas, for its part, issued its own statement calling on mediators and the Board of Peace to "compel" Israel to approve the next steps of the roadmap.
What happens next
Kushner is due to meet Netanyahu on Monday alongside Blair and Mladenov, in what officials on both sides describe as an attempt to salvage the plan rather than renegotiate it from scratch. While in Egypt, Kushner also met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose government has mediated the talks alongside Qatar and Turkey. Israeli media reported that a brief pause in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza followed the initial rejection, though strikes have since resumed, and many Israelis remain skeptical that Hamas is genuinely prepared to disarm.
For Kushner, the Cairo meeting was the highest-level contact with Hamas since the group agreed to last year's ceasefire, and it signals that Washington sees the roadmap's survival as urgent enough to warrant direct engagement despite Netanyahu's public objections. Whether Monday's meeting produces any shift in the Israeli position — or simply hardens the standoff ahead of October's election — will shape the next phase of a ceasefire that has already outlasted most predictions for how long it could hold.
