Jared Kushner's three-hour meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday produced no breakthrough on the stalled Gaza ceasefire deal. Netanyahu repeated his core demand: Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal from the 60% of Gaza that Israeli forces occupy, and he requested a US general supervise the weapons handover. This sequencing demand — disarm first, withdraw later — is the mirror image of Hamas's insistence that Israel withdraw to the "yellow line" before implementation begins. Neither side will move first, which is the point. The meeting followed Kushner's Sunday session in Egypt with Hamas political chief Khalil al-Hayya, where the group said it had accepted the US-backed 15-point roadmap and was waiting for the 14-day negotiation period to begin. Netanyahu had forcefully rejected that same roadmap a week earlier. The official statements from both Netanyahu's office and the Board of Peace — Trump's self-styled peace body that includes Tony Blair and Nickolay Mladenov — described the talks as "deep and constructive" and "lengthy, in depth and very productive," then announced the creation of two working groups on disarmament and demilitarization. Working groups are what diplomats create when they have no agreement. The contradictions within the US position are now visible from orbit. Trump himself said Monday that Israel "should not be striking in Gaza." Hours later, according to Haaretz, the meeting ended with the US agreeing that Israel could continue striking Gaza. Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Kushner had been expected to bring a list of concrete demands — halt attacks, advance withdrawal, increase humanitarian aid — but Netanyahu's precondition framework effectively neutralized the list before it could be delivered. Eight regional powers — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia, and the ceasefire mediators Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey — issued a joint statement placing responsibility for obstruction squarely on Israel and calling on the Board of Peace and the US to take "immediate and concrete measures." This is the diplomatic equivalent of a formal complaint, and it signals that the US is losing its intermediary credibility across the region. The domestic arithmetic explains Netanyahu's intransigence. With Israeli national elections later this year and Netanyahu struggling in polls — particularly on his role in events leading to the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack — any withdrawal from Gaza reads as concession. In May, he publicly stated the next step was expanding to 70% control of Gaza, "tightening the grip" on Hamas "from every direction." The ceasefire deal and the election calendar are pulling in opposite directions, and the election calendar is winning. The human cost continues to accumulate in the gap between diplomatic statements. Since agreeing to the ceasefire on 10 October 2025, Israel has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded more than 4,100, according to Gaza's health ministry and UN OCHA figures. About 2 million people remain in the territory, which is now largely controlled by Israeli forces more than 10 months after the ceasefire ended major military operations. Reconstruction cannot begin under occupation; occupation cannot end without agreement; agreement cannot begin without both parties accepting the roadmap. Analysts have noted that Trump's outsourcing of critical negotiations to family members and associates — Kushner and Steve Witkoff in the Middle East, similar arrangements in Ukraine — is actively undermining Washington's diplomatic weight. Allies and adversaries alike have learned to game inexperienced envoys. The structural problem is not that Kushner lacks skill; it is that Netanyahu has correctly identified that an envoy without institutional backing can be managed with preconditions and working groups indefinitely.
