Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and peace envoy, said on Sunday that Washington was only beginning to understand what is required to demilitarize the Gaza Strip, calling it “beyond your comprehension.”
“Demilitarizing it is not going to be easy,” Kushner said at a press conference in Kyiv, where he appeared alongside U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The United States worked with Hamas for more than four months, he said, resulting in the terrorist group committing to lay down its weapons. “You can’t go in if there’s guns,” Kushner said. “You can’t send a government in to a place.”
“There’s a new government, a Palestinian technocratic government that’s neither the [Palestinian Authority] nor Hamas, that’s built a plan to go forward,” the envoy said.
The U.S. and Israel agree on the “end state” for Gaza, Kushner said, but continue to work through “some political issues” due to the upcoming Israeli election. “They just have a crazy election, and that makes them a little irrational in certain regards,” he added.
The Gaza Strip was “built by NGOs and terrorists, and it’s been a dystopian place for a long time,” Kushner said. “Gaza has not worked for a very, very long time.”
The Trump administration has flooded Gaza with aid since the October 2025 ceasefire and changed how it is distributed, and the war-torn enclave now has one of the lowest malnutrition rates in the world, Kushner continued.
The United Nations had previously been spending three times as much per person on aid in Gaza as it did in Syria, he noted, attributing the gap to “this whole industrial complex of aid” and terrorist groups stealing shipments.
The United States now has a plan to rebuild Gaza, drawn up by a team assembled under Trump and his Board of Peace, he said, adding that “these things take time.”
Kushner said on Aug. 17 that progress toward Gaza’s demilitarization could begin within 30 days, following a nearly four-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Kushner told Fox News that Washington would not support rebuilding Gaza before demilitarization, adding that the administration had addressed Israeli concerns about the Board of Peace roadmap and clarified that Israel’s right to act against imminent threats would not be restricted.
“We could be seeing progress in as little 30 days, hopefully on starting to take some of the weapons out, and hopefully filling in some of the tunnels as well in the next 60 to 90 days,” Kushner said, adding that progress would require cooperation from both sides.
Meanwhile, Hamas continues to threaten Israeli forces positioned in the Strip. The Israel Defense Forces overnight Sunday struck Hamas terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip after an explosive device targeted an IDF vehicle, the military said on Monday morning.
An IDF engineering vehicle set off the Hamas explosive on Sunday in the Yellow Line buffer area in the northern Gaza Strip.
No Israelis were injured in the blast, which the IDF said was a blatant violation of the ceasefire agreement.
The targeted Hamas sites had been used to prepare attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, the IDF added, noting that Southern Command forces remain deployed in the sector in accordance with the ceasefire and will continue operations to remove imminent threats.
Netanyahu visited an Israel Defense Forces outpost near the Yellow Line demarcation boundary on Sept. 2, according to the Prime Minister’s Office. He said Israel would maintain control of the area as it works to complete the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza.
“We control the territory. We are not withdrawing. We are staying on this line,” Netanyahu said during the visit, alongside IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir and senior Southern Command officers.
“We control 60% of the Strip, and our reach extends further, because we are eliminating the terrorists who threaten us. We do so day in and day out,” Netanyahu said, adding, “Yesterday, we got Hamas’s Shin Bet chief. We will surely learn some things.” Shin Bet is a Hebrew acronym for the Israel Security Agency, Israel’s equivalent to the American FBI.
Netanyahu on Sept. 1 extended his congratulations to the country’s security forces on the capture of the head of Hamas’s internal security apparatus, Muein al-Arabid, earlier in the day.
Describing him as “one of the most senior Hamas leaders,” the prime minister said al-Arabid had been “responsible for hiding and transporting our abductees [and] hiding senior Hamas officials,” referring to those taken captive by the terrorist group during its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel.
More recently, al-Arabid was involved in efforts to restore Hamas’s control in Gaza and to carry out attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians, Netanyahu said. “My directive is clear: The State of Israel will continue to persecute all Hamas leaders and all those who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre,” he added.
