Jared Kushner, US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, met Hamas leaders in Egypt on Sunday, two Hamas officials and another official briefed on the meetings said. The talks were part of a diplomatic push to advance Trump’s plan for the future of the Gaza Strip.
A US official confirmed Kushner was in Egypt for talks on Gaza, without providing further details. All four officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail Kushner’s meetings.
Kushner’s visit to the Middle East comes as the US-backed plan to disarm Hamas has appeared to hit a dead end. Last month, Trump announced his Board of Peace had reached an agreement with Hamas that aimed to strip the Palestinian group of its weapons.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu later said he rejected the deal, appearing to put it on ice. After the meetings with Hamas on Sunday, Kushner was expected to travel to Israel to meet Netanyahu to discuss the situation in Gaza.
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Kushner; Tony Blair, the former British prime minister; and Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace director, are to meet Netanyahu on Monday, according to a source familiar with the plans and a diplomatic source. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting.
Several regional powers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint statement condemning Israel’s rejection of the road map, saying: “Israel now bears responsibility for obstructing the efforts to bring peace in Gaza.” Other signers included Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia and the ceasefire mediators.
Direct talks between the US government and Hamas, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organisation, were once rare. But the Trump administration broke that taboo, holding multiple rounds of negotiations with the group to win freedom for the hostages Hamas seized in Israel and to end the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
Although Kushner does not hold an official US government position, Trump has tapped him, alongside real estate developer Steve Witkoff, to lead diplomacy on matters as diverse as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.
Disarming Hamas is a key component of the president’s 20-point plan for the Palestinian enclave, much of which is still unrealised nearly a year after an initial ceasefire was reached in October. But many Israelis are sceptical of the Trump administration’s proposal and say it is unlikely to actually compel Hamas to give up its weapons.
For the deal with Hamas to go ahead, Israel would also most likely have to agree to a phased timeline for withdrawing its forces from the Gaza Strip in parallel with Hamas gradually handing over its weapons. Netanyahu has been loath to do so, demanding “genuine disarmament” before any Israeli withdrawals.
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Analysts said the Israeli prime minister’s position reflected the country’s hawkish turn after the Hamas-led Oct 7, 2023, attacks that ignited the war in Gaza. Netanyahu’s efforts to appeal to voters before national elections this fall also were a factor, they said.
Neither Kushner nor Hamas publicly discussed their meeting in Egypt.
Hamas said a delegation of senior officials led by Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ political chief, had arrived in Egypt to meet with “mediators and guarantors” of the Gaza ceasefire talks. The group said it was committed to Trump’s peace framework, which it accused Israel of undermining by continuing to bombard the enclave despite the truce.
Israel has “escalated militarily on the ground and deepened the humanitarian catastrophe, even as it explicitly rejected the roadmap,” Hamas said in a statement.
Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, met with Kushner to discuss the Gaza peace process, among other issues, according to a statement from the president’s office. - AP
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
