Jared Kushner to meet Hamas in Egypt for Gaza peace plan talks, Israel rejects deal

Hamas sources said on Sunday that they expected to meet in Egypt with US envoy Jared Kushner, as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to push forward a Gaza peace plan rejected by Israel.

Two weeks after Hamas publicly signed on to the latest phase of the deal, Kushner, who is Trump’s son-in-law and special envoy, flew to Egypt ahead of expected talks on Monday in Jerusalem.

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“Mediators informed Hamas that US envoy Jared Kushner will hold a meeting with the Hamas leadership, in the presence of Egyptian and Qatari officials, before Kushner travels to Israel to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” a Hamas source told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Kushner met with mediators from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey, as well as Nickolay Mladenov, the Gaza high representative in Trump’s “Board of Peace” set up to implement the deal, Cairo said.

Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya was also in Egypt, travelling late Saturday to the Mediterranean city of El-Alamein in his first trip since taking over the Gaza-based Islamist movement last month.
Read more: US CENTCOM chief concludes 10-day West Asia tour as USS Abraham Lincoln prepares to returnA second Hamas source said that the US had sought clarifications on several points, including “genuine, rather than merely symbolic, collection, consolidation and storage of weapons, as well as Hamas’s complete relinquishment of governance of Gaza”.

Hamas on July 30 said that it would hand over its weapons to a new Palestinian governing body as part of the latest stage in a Gaza ceasefire declared by Trump.

But Netanyahu, a longtime hawk who faces a tough re-election fight in October, said that Israel rejected the agreement and voiced scepticism that Hamas would actually give up its weapons.