J. Kushner – son-in-law of President Donald Trump – flew to the region after B. Netanyahu, who faces a tough re-election battle, publicly rejected the latest part of the US plan aimed at ending the devastating war in the Gaza Strip.
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J. Kushner, who has a long-standing family friendship with B. Netanyahu, met with him in Jerusalem the day after holding rare direct talks with Hamas in Egypt. The Palestinian militant group has publicly committed to adhering to the plan and disarming, earning praise from D. Trump, but such promises are viewed very skeptically in Israel.
“Both sides agreed that there will be no troop redeployments or reconstruction work in the Gaza Strip until Hamas is disarmed throughout the Gaza Strip,” an Israeli senior official told the AFP news agency.
“It was also agreed that the first step towards the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip would be the demand for Hamas to hand over its weapons so that their use would be stopped under the supervision of a US general,” the official said.
Other members of D. Trump’s so-called Gaza Strip Peace Council, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, participated in the talks alongside J. Kushner.
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This group has not yet commented on the meeting.
The Trump administration has already assigned a certain role to the US military and friendly foreign forces in overseeing the ceasefire declared in the Gaza Strip in October, after which Israeli strikes in this devastated Palestinian territory decreased but were not completely stopped.
The call to involve a US general in overseeing disarmament came after B. Netanyahu publicly rejected an earlier Peace Council text stating that Hamas would hand over its weapons to the emerging Palestinian governing committee.
According to sources, J. Kushner demanded during the talks in Egypt that Hamas prove it is renouncing its weapons and that this group, whose unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel ignited the war in the Gaza Strip, would renounce any role in governing this Palestinian territory in the future.
A Hamas official said that the group, represented by new leader Khalil El-Hayya, told J. Kushner it is committed to adhering to the Gaza Strip plan and wants pressure to be applied on B. Netanyahu.
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