Trump's Gaza Peace Plan: Can Kushner Get Israel and Hamas to the Table?
Hamas officials in Egypt said on 16 August 2026 that they expected to meet U.S. envoy Jared Kushner for talks on President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan, a proposal Israel has already rejected in its current form. Kushner's schedule includes a meeting with Hamas on Sunday 16 August or the following Monday, according to Hamas sources Bangkok Post, alongside meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The visit, planned for the week beginning 13 August, includes officials from the Board of Peace, the group steering the Trump administration's Gaza framework Associated Press. Kushner met with Sisi during the Egypt leg. Israeli media reported that Kushner, along with Nickolay Mladenov and Tony Blair, was to meet Netanyahu on Monday with the aim of advancing Trump's plan BBC.
The proposal Trump announced on 5 August calls for Hamas to give up its weapons and for Israel to pull its military out of Gaza New York Times. A U.S. plan for Gaza's future, detailed in January at Davos (an annual gathering of world leaders and business executives in Switzerland), envisions at least $25 billion in investment and a full rebuilding of the territory New York Times. The Board of Peace has produced a 15-point document that lays out the specific steps.
Netanyahu has rejected that document outright. He stated that Israel's military will not withdraw until Hamas is genuinely disarmed, and has demanded full Hamas disarmament as a precondition — meaning it must happen first, before anything else BBC. That stance puts him at odds with the U.S. plan, which treats disarmament and withdrawal as two parts of one process that happen together, not one before the other.
Israel's rejection has drawn a regional response. Egypt, the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia issued a joint statement saying Israel's rejection of the U.S. plan threatens Trump's peace efforts BBC. The breadth of the coalition, spanning Gulf states, NATO member Turkey, and South Asian governments, reflects the degree to which the fate of the proposal has become a regional rather than purely bilateral concern.
The diplomacy is unfolding against a fragile and already-violated truce. A ceasefire (an agreement to stop fighting) took effect on 10 October. Since then, Israel's military has carried out strikes in the Khan Yunis and Nuseirat areas of Gaza, accusing Hamas of breaking the truce BBC. The New York Times separately reported that Israeli strikes may be undermining Trump's peace plan, with Israel ramping up attacks on the territory New York Times.
Kushner's and Steve Witkoff's involvement in the mediation is not new. Both were architects of Trump's plan to end the Gaza war and were expected to join Israel-Hamas mediation talks as early as October 2025, around the time delegations held their first day of indirect negotiations (where the two sides do not meet face to face but talk through mediators) at Sharm el-Sheikh on 6 October New York Times Reuters. Kushner, who describes himself as a "deal guy," was fielding calls at his mansion when he heard that Hamas would begin talks to release Israeli hostages New York Times.
The war began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. More than 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel's military campaign, according to the territory's health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the UN. The UN estimates that about 1.9 million people, roughly 90% of Gaza's population, have been displaced (forced from their homes) since the war started BBC.
The core problem for Kushner's diplomacy is that the two sides want things that cannot both happen as they currently state them. Netanyahu demands that Hamas give up its weapons before Israel withdraws. Hamas expects to negotiate a plan that Israel has already rejected, with no sign that it will accept giving up its weapons without a guaranteed Israeli pullback. The 15-point document was designed to bridge that gap by linking the two steps together. Netanyahu's refusal to accept that linkage removes the bridge before Kushner even sits down with either side.
What Kushner may be testing is whether direct U.S. engagement with Hamas, going around Israel's objection, can build enough pressure to force changes to the 15-point framework. The meeting with Hamas officials would be one of the few direct U.S. channels to the group outside of the existing Egyptian and Qatari mediators. But the regional joint statement suggests that diplomatic weight is building behind the U.S. plan despite Israel's objections. The question is whether that pressure changes Netanyahu's thinking or makes him dig in further.
The strikes in Khan Yunis and Nuseirat complicate both tracks. If Israel continues military operations that mediators and regional states view as truce violations, the political space for Hamas to accept any disarmament framework shrinks. On the other side, Israel's accusation that Hamas broke the truce gives Netanyahu a reason to keep up the military pressure that the U.S. plan is trying to wind down. The ceasefire is holding in form if not in substance. Whether it survives the coming week will largely determine whether Kushner leaves the region with a viable path forward or a framework that both parties have rejected for different reasons.
