MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The president's envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, held a rare meeting with leaders of Hamas in Egypt on Sunday.
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Today, Kushner is in Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kushner is trying to get closer to achieving President Trump's plan for a postwar Gaza. The U.S. and Hamas back the plan. Israel does not.
MARTIN: NPR's Daniel Estrin is with us now from Tel Aviv. Good morning, Daniel.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: First of all, just how unusual was it that any high-level representative of the U.S. met directly with Hamas leaders?
ESTRIN: It is rare. Remember, the U.S. labels Hamas a terrorist group. But Jared Kushner did meet Hamas one time before. That was 10 months ago. And that meeting helped seal the deal on the Gaza ceasefire agreement. Since then, though, not much progress has happened at all on a postwar transition for Gaza.
MARTIN: OK. So do we have any sense of what came out of this meeting?
ESTRIN: We have not seen any evidence of a real breakthrough. I spoke with an official briefed on the meeting who spoke anonymously to divulge some details. And what I learned is that the U.S. wants Hamas to stop military activities and to start disarming. They want Hamas to hand over control of Gaza to a new Palestinian committee. And Hamas affirmed that it is willing to do that. But the reality here, Michel, is that it's been 10 months since the ceasefire was declared, and there's been no tangible progress on the ground in Gaza.
It took months just for Trump's Board of Peace to come up with a formal disarmament plan, and then it took many more months for Hamas to agree to it. And so now the U.S. is pushing this new, 15-point roadmap for Hamas to disarm and for Israel to withdraw. And Israel says it will not withdraw from Gaza until Hamas fully disarms. And a big group of Mideast countries is now saying that Israel is the one to blame for obstructing peace efforts. Those countries include the ceasefire mediators themselves, Qatar and Egypt. So Kushner is now in Israel. He's meeting Netanyahu to discuss his objections to the plan.
MARTIN: And so given Israel's objections, what do you expect to be coming out of this meeting between Kushner and Netanyahu?
ESTRIN: Really, the main sticking point here is that Israel is 10 weeks away from elections and Netanyahu could lose power. And Kushner knows that Netanyahu does not want Israelis to think he's giving any concessions to Hamas. That would be very unpopular. His far-right security minister even said recently that Israel should be killing 30 to 40 people every night in Gaza. So Netanyahu is under pressure. And if he would agree to any progress in Gaza, it would be the kind of things that could be done behind the scenes.
The official I spoke to said Kushner wants Israel to authorize a new Gaza police force to get training. It wants Israel to allow an international stabilization force to enter Gaza. But here, Israel has its own objections. They may seem subtle, but these are important to Israel. A person briefed on this told me, Israel doesn't trust this plan for a Palestinian committee to take over Hamas' weapons. Israel wants more international oversight there. So Kushner's challenge here, really, is to find anything Israel is willing to do with just 10 weeks to go before Israeli elections.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv. Daniel, thank you.
ESTRIN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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