Jared Kushner sat down with Hamas political leaders in a surprise meeting in Egypt on Sunday, pressing the militant group to take "concrete, verifiable steps" toward disarming, even as Israel's prime minister refuses to budge until every weapon is surrendered.
The meeting brought Kushner, serving as U.S. Special Envoy for Peace, face to face with Hamas political leader Khalil al-Hayy, Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad, Qatari diplomat Ali al-Thawadi, and an unnamed senior Turkish official. Two sources close to the meeting told Axios that Kushner's mission centered on translating Hamas's obligation to demilitarize Gaza into steps that could be verified on the ground.
The session marks the latest push by the Trump administration to salvage momentum from its 20-point Gaza peace plan, first proposed in September 2025. That framework produced an initial ceasefire and a hostage-prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, but the two sides now occupy directly contradictory positions on what comes next, and neither shows any sign of yielding.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on August 9 that Israel flatly rejects what he called the "15-point document", a reference whose relationship to the broader 20-point plan remains unclear.
Netanyahu left no room for interpretation, telling ministers:
"I want to clarify this: Israel rejects the 15-point document. I have heard people saying, 'You didn't say that.' So here I am saying it again."
He went further, declaring that the Israeli Defense Forces will not pull back a single soldier until Hamas hands over every weapon it possesses, heavy and light alike.
"When I say Hamas must be disarmed, I mean heavy weapons, lighter weapons, all weapons. We are talking about genuine disarmament, not a fictitious one."
Netanyahu also ruled out Palestinian statehood outright: "As long as I am Prime Minister, there will be no Palestinian State." He faces Israeli elections in October, and the wars in Gaza and Iran are expected to dominate the campaign. That political calendar raises an obvious question about whether Netanyahu's maximalist stance reflects strategic conviction, electoral positioning, or both.
The friction between Trump administration officials over the Iran deal has already illustrated how Middle East policy decisions can strain relationships inside the president's own orbit. The Gaza disarmament push adds another layer of pressure.
Hamas's position is the mirror image of Netanyahu's. The group has stated it will only disarm after Israel fully withdraws from Gaza and ends military operations. Surrendering heavy weapons, Hamas said, would come later, and only if a Palestinian state is established.
That sequence is a non-starter for Netanyahu. And it creates a deadlock the Trump administration is now trying to break through direct engagement with both sides on consecutive days. Kushner met Hamas on Sunday; he was scheduled to sit down with Netanyahu on Monday to discuss what the plan calls "corresponding steps" Israel must take if Hamas agrees to disarm.
Senior Hamas official Basim Naeem pushed back hard against Netanyahu's August 9 remarks, urging U.S. officials and international mediators to "exert pressure" on the Israeli leader and "prevent him from obstructing the process for domestic political and electoral considerations." Naeem described Hamas's commitment to the Board of Peace's proposal as a "national responsibility" serving the "interests of the Palestinian people."
The Trump administration's Board of Peace, the body overseeing the 20-point framework, wants Hamas to retire all weapons and military infrastructure so that an International Stabilization Force can deploy for reconstruction and recovery "without theft or intimidation of Palestinians involved in the efforts." In return, the framework calls on Israel to make "corresponding withdrawals" from Gaza.
Amid broader staffing changes across the Trump administration, Kushner's central role in the Gaza negotiations signals that the president is relying on his closest circle to push through the most difficult diplomatic work.
Hours before Kushner arrived, Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya met separately with Rashad, the Egyptian intelligence chief. The Times of Israel reported it was Rashad's first meeting with Hamas leaders since the end of the war in Gaza last October, a gap that underscores how frozen the diplomatic channel had become before Sunday's flurry of activity.
The presence of Egyptian, Qatari, and Turkish officials at the Kushner meeting reflects the regional architecture Trump's team has built around the peace plan. Each country brings different leverage. Egypt controls the border with Gaza. Qatar has long served as a financial and diplomatic intermediary for Hamas. Turkey maintains its own relationship with the group's political leadership.
A source close to the meeting told Axios the administration's position is unambiguous:
"There can be no ambiguity: Hamas must relinquish governing authority and all weapons and military infrastructure. And Gaza can never again be a source of terror for Israel."
That demand goes beyond disarmament. It requires Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip for 19 years, to surrender political power entirely, handing governance to a Palestinian technocratic government. For a group that has defined itself through armed resistance and territorial control, that is not a concession. It is an existential ask.
Trump has rejected suggestions that U.S. military resources are stretched thin, and his administration appears determined to press forward on multiple Middle East fronts simultaneously, Iran and Gaza chief among them.
Last month, Trump celebrated what he described as a breakthrough in the negotiations, saying Hamas had agreed to lay down its arms. Hamas's late-July agreement to turn over weapons did represent a shift, but Netanyahu publicly rejected it almost immediately, and Hamas attached conditions that Israel considers unacceptable.
The result is a peace plan that has produced real results, a ceasefire, a hostage exchange, but now faces the hardest stretch. Both sides have agreed in principle that disarmament must happen. They disagree completely on the order of operations. Netanyahu says disarmament first, withdrawal second. Hamas says withdrawal first, disarmament second, statehood as the precondition for surrendering heavy weapons.
Kushner's back-to-back meetings, Hamas on Sunday, Netanyahu on Monday, represent the administration's attempt to bridge that gap through direct personal diplomacy. Whether either side moved at all after Sunday's session remains unknown. No outcomes or agreements from the meeting have been reported.
Conservative critics have already voiced concerns about the broader direction of Trump's Middle East negotiations, and the Gaza track will face similar scrutiny if concessions tilt too far in either direction.
Several open questions hang over the process. The relationship between the "20-point plan" and the "15-point document" Netanyahu rejected remains unclear, whether they are the same framework, different versions, or separate components. The composition and mandate of the International Stabilization Force have not been publicly detailed. And the formal structure of the Board of Peace itself remains opaque.
Reports of a White House effort to scrutinize foreign lobby ties among political allies suggest the administration is aware that Middle East diplomacy carries domestic political risks alongside the geopolitical ones.
Getting a terrorist group to hand over its weapons and its power is the kind of thing that sounds simple in a framework document and proves nearly impossible at the table. Kushner is at the table now. The question is whether anyone on the other side of it is ready to move.
