Kushner's Gaza Peace Plan hits a wall with Netanyahu's hardline stance

Jared Kushner spent four hours in Jerusalem on Monday attempting to salvage a peace plan that Israel had already spurned. The talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, convened to unblock the 15-point US-backed roadmap for Gaza, produced no breakthrough on its key provisions. What emerged instead was a set of ad hoc plans, but far short of the disarmament and troop withdrawal the plan actually demands. Kushner arrived in Israel from El-Alamein in Egypt, where he had held direct talks with a Hamas delegation led by the group's political chief, Khalil al-Hayya. The itinerary alone signalled a major push for shuttle diplomacy.

Netanyahu and Kushner did agree to establish two working groups, one on the disarmament of Gaza and another on its deepening sanitation, water and public health emergencies. They also settled the mechanics of any eventual handover of Hamas weapons, to be decommissioned under the supervision of US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who is expected to command a proposed international stabilisation force. A new "deconfliction mechanism" was created to judge whether flashpoints in Gaza genuinely warrant Israeli military action. These are the details of implementation. However, it is not yet clear whether the two parties will reach that stage and whether there will be anything to implement.

Netanyahu held his line. Israel would permit neither reconstruction nor a troop withdrawal until Hamas gave up its weapons entirely. He also would not commit to pulling back from the Yellow Line, the demarcation of Israeli-held territory set out in October's ceasefire. Kushner, meanwhile, appeared to agree rather than challenge that position, telling Fox News that Gaza would not be rebuilt until demilitarisation was complete and that Israel's right to defend itself would not be curtailed.

Netanyahu's rigidity has an obvious domestic logic. His coalition trails in the polls ahead of Knesset elections on October 27, and any hint of concession on Gaza would invite fierce reprisal from hardline partners such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has called for nightly targeted killings in Gaza and pushed for the mass emigration of Palestinians. For a prime minister at the mercy of such allies, intransigence is not simply preference but survival.

The consequences of that intransigence are becoming harder to contain diplomatically. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan issued a joint statement placing sole responsibility for the impasse on Israel and calling on Washington and the Board of Peace to take immediate, concrete steps to prevent the roadmap's collapse. That is a formidable bloc to have arrayed against a plan that the United States itself authored.

Hamas, notably, has accepted the roadmap in principle and expressed willingness to disarm, but only in step with reciprocal Israeli action. Its negotiators handed Kushner a list of alleged Israeli ceasefire violations and demanded an end to near-daily airstrikes, along with a phased withdrawal running parallel to disarmament rather than preceding it. Before surrendering weapons, Hamas wants international mediators to compel Israel to accept the plan publicly. Each side, in other words, is waiting for the other to move first, and Kushner's visit did nothing to break that.

The Board of Peace, Trump's vehicle for overseeing Gaza's reconstruction, continues its work. Tony Blair and Nickolay Mladenov joined Kushner's meeting with Netanyahu, and the board is pressing ahead with plans for a 20,000-strong stabilisation force, with Uganda and Burundi among the nations discussing troop contributions. But with American midterm elections in November, time is not on their side. A stalled Gaza plan would be another uncomfortable challenge, along with the Iran war for the Trump administration and the Republican Party in the midterms.

Already, there are signs that Trump’s diplomatic influence may be waning as he struggles to control the narrative. The Iran situation is turning from bad to worse. And, on Gaza, having declared publicly that Israel should halt its strikes, Trump watched his son-in-law's meeting in Israel conclude with tacit American acceptance that those strikes would continue. The gap between presidential rhetoric and ground situation is becoming difficult to bridge. It points to a pattern in the White House's approach to the Middle East, in which sensitive negotiations are entrusted to a narrow circle of relatives and loyalists whose inexperience leaves Washington vulnerable to being outmanoeuvred by more practised regional operators.