Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, is expected to travel to Israel and Egypt next week to discuss implementation of the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan, according to sources familiar with the matter, Axios reported on Friday.
Kushner is expected to be joined by Nickolay Mladenov, the U.S.-led Board of Peace’s high representative for Gaza, and Tony Blair, a member of the board’s executive committee, according to reports. The delegation is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials in Israel before traveling to Cairo for talks with mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
The trip comes after Netanyahu rejected the Board of Peace’s 15-point roadmap for implementing Trump’s Gaza plan, objecting to its provisions linking an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip to the phased decommissioning of Hamas and other terrorist groups’ weapons. Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is fully disarmed, calling for “real disarmament, not fictitious disarmament.”
The Board of Peace announced on July 31 that Hamas had agreed to the framework, which calls for the group’s disarmament, a transition to Palestinian technocratic governance and a phased Israeli withdrawal. Hamas officials, however, have said implementation depends on Israel first halting military operations and withdrawing its forces.
