Kushner to visit Israel next week for talks on Gaza peace plan

Courtney Subramanian, Bloomberg News on Aug 13, 2026

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WASHINGTON — Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and peace envoy, is planning to travel to Israel next week for talks on the situation in Gaza as Washington continues to push for diplomatic progress on its long-delayed peace plan, according to a U.S. official.

The trip comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a 15-point proposal by the Board of Peace, an international consortium set up to implement Trump’s postwar vision for the ravaged Palestinian territory. The roadmap unveiled late last month calls for disarming Hamas, placing Gaza under a new Palestinian government and withdrawing Israel’s military from the territory.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said the U.S. and Israel agreed on a desired outcome in Gaza and would work together on other areas of mutual concern. Kushner may also visit other Middle Eastern countries to discuss the Gaza plan with other regional partners, according to the official.

Netanyahu, who is facing a tough reelection in October, told his weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday that the Israel Defense Forces would not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas disarmed.

Hamas said it would hand over heavy weapons to a proposed new Gaza administration, but only if Israel withdraws its forces and a Palestinian state is created. The roadmap speaks of the new administration empowering individual Palestinians to keep their small arms.

Trump’s original plan envisioned Israeli troops and tanks leaving the Gaza Strip entirely as well as discussions of eventual statehood — while casting these as end results of the territory’s complete demilitarization and post-Hamas stabilization.

The initial ceasefire phase of the Trump plan was reached last October. There’s been little progress since, and the Israeli army has advanced beyond armistice lines against a shrinking Hamas fiefdom where 2 million Palestinians are crammed.

A surge of Israeli air strikes in July that targeted Hamas commanders — which also killed dozens of civilians — has ceased since Aug. 3, a tacit sign that Netanyahu heeded calls from the Board of Peace’s top envoy, Nickolay Mladenov, to allow for diplomacy to play out.

In another sign of potential progress, the Board of Peace on Saturday said it brought together experts to plan temporary housing for displaced Palestinians, an interim measure before the permanent reconstruction that Mladenov has said would require Hamas to disarm first.

(Dan Williams and Fares Akram contributed to this report.)