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Kushner meets Netanyahu
US envoy Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday after holding talks with Hamas leaders in Egypt aimed at reviving a US-backed Gaza peace plan that Israel has rejected.
“Jared Kushner met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday”
Reuters said Kushner met Netanyahu with Nickolay Mladenov, Trump’s Board of Peace envoy for Gaza, and that Netanyahu publicly rejected a US-backed agreement under which Hamas would surrender its arms in exchange for Israel withdrawing from Gaza.
Euronews reported that Kushner met Hamas’ new leader Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt’s Mediterranean city of El-Alamein on Sunday, where a source said Kushner pushed for Hamas to take "concrete, verifiable steps".
Euronews also said Hamas called on mediators and Trump’s so-called Board of Peace to "compel" Israel to "approve the roadmap...and begin establishing a timetable for its implementation."
Strikes and competing claims
While Kushner’s diplomacy unfolded, Euronews reported that Israel resumed airstrikes in Gaza after a lull following Trump’s promotion of the peace plan, with several people injured Sunday after Israeli aircraft targeted a house west of Nuseirat.
Euronews quoted Mahmoud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defence agency, saying the strikes injured people, and it added that the Israeli military said it was responding to a threat by Islamic Jihad militants and that it had tried to mitigate civilian casualties.
Reuters reported that Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza despite agreeing to a ceasefire as part of Trump’s plan, and it said Hamas last month agreed to a new U.S.-backed 15-point roadmap aimed at moving Trump’s plan forward while Israel rejected that roadmap.
Euronews also said Israeli operations have killed at least 1,262 Palestinians since the ceasefire came into effect on 10 October, according to figures by Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, and it added that the Israeli army reported five deaths in its ranks during the same period.
October election stakes
NBC News said Kushner was set to meet Netanyahu on Monday after rare talks with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo, as the U.S. tried to revive a peace plan for Gaza that Israel has rejected.
“called for the “targeted” killing of “30 or 40” people in Gaza every night”
NBC News reported that Powerful National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir condemned efforts toward peace and called for the “targeted” killing of “30 or 40” people in Gaza every night, while Netanyahu had earlier rejected the 15-point plan and vowed there would be no military pull-out until Hamas is "genuinely disarmed."
NPR said the talks aim to salvage the new 15-point, U.S.-backed road map for Hamas to disarm in Gaza and Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territory shattered by war, and it put the stakes at the lives of some 2 million people in Gaza and the reconstruction of the enclave.
NPR also said that under the road map, Hamas would hand over weapons to the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to oversee daily operations, but that Netanyahu’s stance left reconstruction and the deployment of international forces to separate Israeli forces from committee-controlled areas on hold.
