U.S. envoy Jared Kushner will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Monday, following talks with Hamas leaders in Egypt aimed at reviving a U.S.-backed peace plan for Gaza that Israel has so far rejected.
The meeting comes two weeks after Hamas approved the final phase of Trump’s Gaza plan, which Netanyahu has refused to endorse, insisting that any solution must ensure that the group is “truly disarmed.”
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met with Hamas’s new leader, Khalil al-Hayya, in the Egyptian Mediterranean city of El Alamein on Sunday, according to sources familiar with the talks who spoke to AFP.
Kushner called on Hamas to take “concrete and verifiable steps” and conveyed the message that “Gaza can never again be a source of terror for Israel,” one source said.
The group subsequently said it had urged mediators and Trump’s so-called Board of Peace to “force” Israel to “approve the roadmap and begin setting a timeline for its implementation.”
A photograph released by Egypt, the host of the meeting, did not include al-Hayya but showed Kushner sitting at a table alongside members of the Board of Peace, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Qatar and Türkiye, key mediators alongside Egypt, also participated.
For years, the United States refused to engage with Hamas, which it designates as a terrorist organization and which led the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the latest war in Gaza.
However, the Trump administration has become increasingly open to direct engagement in hopes of ending the devastating conflict, negotiating the October ceasefire agreement that led to the release of the remaining Israeli hostages.
