Kushner to Meet Hamas as Trump Pushes Gaza Peace Plan Israel Has Rejected
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 entity 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 the disarmament of Hamas and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza New York Times. A U.S. plan for Gaza's future, detailed in January at Davos, envisions at least $25 billion in investment and a full reconstruction of the territory New York Times. The Board of Peace has produced a 15-point document that turns the framework into specific, actionable steps.
Netanyahu has rejected that document outright. He stated that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces, Israel's military) will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed, and has demanded full Hamas disarmament as a precondition for implementing any Gaza deal BBC. That stance puts him at odds with the sequencing in the U.S. plan, which treats disarmament and withdrawal as linked components of a single process rather than sequential preconditions.
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 diplomatic track is unfolding against a fragile and already-violated truce. A Gaza ceasefire (a formal agreement to halt fighting) took effect on 10 October. The Israel Defense Forces have since carried out strikes in the Khan Yunis and Nuseirat areas, 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 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 since the war started BBC.
The central structural problem for Kushner's diplomacy is that the two parties' bottom lines are mutually exclusive as currently articulated. Netanyahu demands disarmament before withdrawal. Hamas expects to negotiate a plan that Israel has already rejected, with no indication that it will accept the disarmament condition without a guaranteed Israeli pullback. The 15-point document was designed to bridge that gap by linking the two steps. Netanyahu's refusal to accept the linkage removes the bridge before Kushner sits down with either side.
What Kushner may be testing is whether direct U.S. engagement with Hamas, bypassing Israel's veto, can generate enough momentum to force modifications to the 15-point framework. The meeting with Hamas officials would represent one of the few direct U.S. channels to the group outside of existing Egyptian and Qatari mediation. 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 calculus or reinforces his resistance.
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 narrows. Conversely, Israel's accusation that Hamas broke the truce gives Netanyahu justification to maintain the military pressure that the U.S. plan seeks 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.
