WASHINGTON — The ceasefire was supposed to stop the killing. Since it took effect last October, 1,260 more Palestinians have died as negotiators circulated frameworks, diplomats announced breakthroughs, and Jared Kushner prepared his latest trip to Jerusalem to rescue a peace plan that Israel has now rejected.
On Friday, the Trump administration confirmed that Kushner will travel to Israel next week alongside Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace’s director general, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an executive committee member of the body. The visit comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government formally refused a key provision of Trump’s 15-point framework: a requirement that Hamas disarm and transfer weapons to a Palestinian third party while Israel concurrently withdrew its troops from Gaza.
Netanyahu’s stated position is not complicated. He has said Israel will not leave Gaza until Hamas is completely disarmed. The Board of Peace’s plan requires both things to happen simultaneously. Netanyahu rejects that sequencing. Without it, the deal collapses.
The Board of Peace, the advisory body Trump created early in his second term and stocked with real estate figures and former intelligence officials, released what it described as a historic 20-point framework for Gaza in July. The plan called for a permanent ceasefire, Hamas disarmament in three phases matched by Israeli troop withdrawal, a transfer of governing power to a technocratic Palestinian administration, an International Stabilisation Force deployment, and major reconstruction. According to Al Jazeera, Hamas negotiator Ghazi Hamad endorsed the framework conditionally, calling it a “comprehensive framework” contingent on Israel first implementing an earlier Egypt-brokered agreement. Netanyahu’s government rejected the simultaneous disarmament-withdrawal provision.
A Board of Peace official said Friday: “What is critical is that we both agree on the desired outcome and are finding ways to accelerate progress.” The official declined to name the parties or describe the gaps between them.
The genocide in Gaza has claimed 73,389 Palestinian lives since October 7, 2023, according to the territory’s health ministry. The ceasefire has not stopped the killing. Since it nominally began, 1,260 more have died and Israel has come to control approximately 70 percent of Gaza’s territory. In the West Bank, settler violence has continued at a rate the United Nations describes as unprecedented: 3,033 documented attacks between January 2025 and June 2026, averaging roughly six per day, with 76 Palestinians killed in the West Bank in 2026 alone, including 18 children.
On Friday, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned settler violence against a Palestinian family, calling the attack “disgusting” and “thuggish behaviour” with “no excuse.” His statement came the same day that Netanyahu’s rejection of the White House’s own peace framework became public.
Kushner’s visit follows a pattern predating the Board of Peace. He traveled to the region during Trump’s first term on Abraham Accords diplomacy, and his family’s financial interests in the Gulf have overlapped with his diplomatic role in ways that drew bipartisan criticism. A Board official said the three envoys plan to address Israeli opposition to the plan before traveling to Cairo to meet Egyptian and other mediators. What specific concessions or alternative sequencing Kushner intends to offer Netanyahu has not been disclosed.
The Hamas disarmament deal announced in July was described at the time as a breakthrough. Hamas’s conditional endorsement was treated as evidence the framework had traction. Netanyahu’s rejection, which produced an emergency visit by three senior envoys, suggests the breakthrough was premature. The administration’s difficulty is structural: to accept the Board of Peace framework, Netanyahu may need to break with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, both of whom have publicly opposed any Israeli withdrawal from Gaza under any conditions. Netanyahu has avoided breaking his coalition at every prior inflection point in this conflict.
Netanyahu’s war machine has repeatedly operated through exactly this pattern: acknowledging frameworks publicly while undermining them in practice. The same government joined seven rounds of ceasefire talks on Lebanon while resuming artillery strikes on southern Lebanese villages hours after each session. The Gaza dynamic is similar. Israel acknowledged the Board of Peace’s 20-point framework while its military continued operating inside Gaza under what both parties nominally call a ceasefire.
Khalil al-Hayya, elected Hamas’s overall leader in July by a single vote, has said the movement will not disarm while Israel continues to hold Gaza territory. That position mirrors Netanyahu’s: neither side will move first. The Board of Peace’s plan was designed to make both moves happen simultaneously. Netanyahu’s rejection of simultaneity is therefore a rejection of the plan’s foundational logic, not a dispute over one provision.
According to The National, the visit is being framed by Board officials as an effort to bridge gaps rather than resolve a collapse. Whether Kushner carries specific concessions or simply the weight of Trump’s impatience is not stated. What is known is that 73,000 Palestinians have died since October 2023, that 1,260 of them died during the ceasefire that was supposed to end the killing, and that no previous announcement of diplomatic progress has halted that toll.
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