With Trump’s Hamas deal in peril, Kushner set to visit Israel for Gaza talks

TEL AVIV, Israel — Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s senior aide and son-in-law, is set to visit Israel early next week, according to four people familiar with the plans, days after the Israeli government rejected a U.S.-brokered disarmament deal with Hamas.

Kushner is expected to meet with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to discuss the Gaza Strip, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to divulge details about Kushner’s schedule.

The deal, agreed to late last month between Trump’s Board of Peace and the militant group Hamas, called for the disarmament of Palestinian factions in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces there.

The Board of Peace is a new international organization chaired by Trump that has focused on plans for governing and rebuilding Gaza. Kushner is a senior member of its executive board and was involved in ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel.

Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel rejected the deal, a move that was seen as an appeal to his right-wing voting base before national elections in October. Yet the prime minister also ordered the Israeli military to pause its strikes in Gaza, in an apparent effort to appease the Trump administration.

For days after the announcement, the Israeli military conducted no airstrikes in Gaza, until Wednesday, when the military carried out a fresh attack, saying it was targeting Hamas militants. It conducted further attacks Thursday.

Hamas officials have condemned the strikes, calling on mediating countries in the region to pressure Israel to halt them.

Hamas remains in control of about half of Gaza, where most of its people live. The group said that among those killed by Israel this week was the head of the police force in the Gaza City area.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza and former United Nations envoy, will join Kushner in Israel, according to two of the people with knowledge of the visit. Mladenov has played a leading role in the negotiations with Hamas over disarmament, frequently meeting with officials from the group in Egypt.

Kushner and Mladenov were also expected to visit Egypt next week to meet with regional mediators, according to two of the people.

The deal with Hamas says that, as part of the disarmament process, Israel should first uphold its side of the ceasefire, which was agreed to in October last year. That includes halting airstrikes and allowing more aid into Gaza.

The 15-point document leaves elements of the disarmament process vague, however. It calls for a “gradual, sequential, and time-bound manner” for decommissioning and storing heavy weapons, with an exact timetable still to be determined.

It adds that, at the “end of the process,” the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza will “hold, control, or store weapons in Gaza.” The committee, a body of Palestinian technocrats, was assembled by the Board of Peace to take over governing Gaza under the board’s supervision.

Many Israelis remain skeptical that Trump’s Board of Peace can successfully disarm Hamas. The group has long touted armed struggle against Israel as the core of its ideology, and members have said they regard disarmament as tantamount to surrender.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.