Jared Kushner spent his Sunday in El Alamein doing the one thing Washington has done only once before: talking to Hamas face to face. The President's son-in-law met Khalil al-Hayya, the movement's political leader, along with Board of Peace director Nickolay Mladenov and former British prime minister Tony Blair, sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. [1] Al Jazeera reports that Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad, Qatari diplomat Ali Al Thawadi and a senior Turkish official were also present. [2]
Saturday's brief recorded a trip that still sat for Sunday, with the paper arguing that a handshake is not a booking note. The trip happened. The question the meeting could not settle is the one Netanyahu posed a week ago, when he called Trump's 15-point roadmap unacceptable and vowed that Israeli forces would not withdraw until Hamas was completely disarmed. [1]
What the meeting was for
A source familiar with the talks described the objective to Al Jazeera as translating the roadmap's obligations into concrete, verifiable steps: maintaining the ceasefire, transferring governing responsibilities to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, and ensuring Hamas has no role in the territory's future administration. [2] That formulation came from an official who sits on neither the Board of Peace nor the American payroll, which is precisely why it reads as a work plan rather than a communiqué. Someone wanted the mechanics public before the Israelis could dismiss the meeting as theater. [2]
A Palestinian source said Hamas leadership briefed Kushner on Israeli ceasefire violations, and that Kushner told the delegation Washington rejects any plans to displace Gaza's residents. [2] The displacement pledge answers the fear doing quiet work across Arab capitals since the war began, that Washington's regional order contemplates a Gaza without Gazans. Whether the envoy had authority to make that promise binding is unknowable from outside; that Hamas asked for it first tells you what its side of the table considers settled.
Hamas issued a statement after the meeting emphasizing its acceptance of the roadmap's second phase and calling on the mediators and the Board of Peace to compel Israel to implement its obligations under the first phase, end violations, halt killings and incursions, and begin building a timetable. [2] That is a familiar shape: Hamas commits on paper, conditions its compliance on Israeli conduct, and dares the Americans to enforce symmetry. An official quoted by Al Jazeera was blunter than the statement. There can be no ambiguity, the source said: Hamas must relinquish governing authority and all weapons, and Gaza can never again be a source of terror for Israel. [2]
No outcome details were released, and none of the parties pretended otherwise. [1]
The rejection Kushner cannot meet
The obstacle is not Hamas's signature. Trump announced the 15-point plan at the end of last month, and after more than a week of silence Netanyahu publicly rejected it, insisting the Israeli military would not withdraw until Hamas was fully disarmed. [1] Hamas agreed to a disarmament sequence but warned implementation depends on Israel honoring its own obligations under the October ceasefire. [1]
On Sunday the foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt issued a joint statement condemning Israel's rejection of the roadmap, branding it a direct assault on US-led peace efforts and Palestinian statehood. The ministers warned that rejecting the framework could undermine efforts to end the war and achieve a lasting political settlement, urged Washington to step in and enforce compliance, and insisted only a two-state solution on 1967 borders can bring lasting stability. [1][2] Eight governments that normally hedge between Washington and Jerusalem chose instead to co-sign an indictment of Jerusalem's position. That list is itself a diplomatic fact: the American plan now has Arab endorsement and an Israeli veto.
The ground beneath the diplomacy kept burning while the delegations met. Israel resumed air strikes on Gaza in recent days despite the October ceasefire, with a strike on a tent encampment in Khan Younis wounding at least five people Sunday and separate fire hitting an apartment block in the Nuseirat camp. [2] Al Jazeera counts more than 1,250 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since that ceasefire took effect. [2] A roadmap whose first phase is measured against that ledger does not need new enemies; it needs its guarantors to notice the arithmetic.
Kushner and Mladenov are expected in Israel on Monday to meet Netanyahu, according to a diplomatic source. [1] A senior Israeli official told Al Jazeera that Israel is concerned about Washington's demand to end targeted assassinations of Hamas fighters in Gaza, a window into how narrow the surviving dispute has become and how hard it still is to close. [2] Al Arabiya English adds a further wrinkle: Kushner is expected to sit with the Hamas delegation again after his Israeli meetings, this time with mediators present. [3]
The man doing the asking
The machinery around Kushner tells you how seriously the administration is treating the file. A Board of Peace official said Friday that the goal of this week's meetings was to concretize the next steps of the new ceasefire plan, bureaucratic language for turning a fifteen-point document into signed schedules. [1] Mladenov runs that board's day-to-day work; Blair supplies the cover of a quartet-era veteran; Egypt supplies the room, Qatar and Turkey the channels to Hamas, and Washington the pressure on Jerusalem. Every party brought something except the one whose compliance is missing.
Kushner is the administration's only envoy with a working relationship with every party at the table, and the only one who has sat across from al-Hayya before. In October he met the Hamas leader to finalize the earlier ceasefire agreement that secured the release of the remaining hostages, and direct contact with Hamas remains rare enough that Sunday marked only his reported second such session. [1] The US government classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization and refused contact with it for decades; this administration has decided results outrank taboos. [2]
His commercial history shadows the portfolio. Affinity Partners, his private equity firm, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, and the UAE and Qatar have invested alongside it. Asked about conflicts of interest on 60 Minutes, Kushner answered that what people call conflicts of interest, he and Steve Witkoff call experience and trusted relationships throughout the world. [1] The line was meant as reassurance. On a Sunday when eight Arab foreign ministers demanded Washington force compliance from Israel, it read instead as a description of whose phone rings first.
The region around the table
The Gaza file no longer runs alone. CNN's Sunday ledger paired the El Alamein talks with a pause in direct US-Iran strikes that persists even as Iranian-backed fronts burn: Yemen's internationally recognized government claimed 181 attacks on the Houthis in 24 hours, and Israel killed a senior Hezbollah commander a day after strikes it said avenged three wounded soldiers in southern Lebanon. [1] The paper's Saturday coverage recorded Araghchi's refusal to decide on talks with Washington and the third ADNOC vessel hit in less than a week. None of that moved during the meeting.
Oil futures stayed flat through Sunday, with American pump prices holding above four dollars a gallon, and MarineTraffic recorded no notable ship movements through the Strait of Hormuz in the previous 24 hours. [1] The chokepoint Kushner's hosts did not discuss remains the difference between a regional settlement and a global one.
What Sunday bought
A US envoy meeting Hamas's leader in Egypt, with Qatari and Turkish officials in the room and an Israeli visit queued for Monday, is real diplomacy by any standard this war has set. It produced a Hamas statement that accepts a roadmap Israel rejects, an Arab joint statement demanding Washington enforce it, and no visible movement from the one government whose compliance matters most. [1][2]
The paper's position from Saturday stands, with one amendment. A handshake is not a booking note; neither is a roadmap with one signature. Sunday advanced the second signature and left the first where it has been all month, in Jerusalem, awaiting a prime minister who called the document unacceptable and an election calendar that rewards him for saying so. [1]
-- YOSEF STERN, Jerusalem