The President of the United States sent his son-in-law to meet Hamas, so as to more effectively pressure the government of Israel.
That is the kind of sentence that, even just a few years ago, would have been assumed to be speculative fiction – or if it was real, would set off weeks of outraged headlines, especially if it happened under a Democratic president.
But it is exactly what Donald Trump did over this weekend, and there is barely a mumble of Republican outrage. Jared Kushner, with former UK prime minister Tony Blair in his entourage, met senior Hamas leaders in Cairo on Sunday in something of a desperate bid to revive Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.
The US managed to broker a nominal ceasefire in Gaza last October, and last month Trump announced he had transformed this into a permanent deal in which Hamas had agreed to a phased disarmament of its weapons and to hand over power to a new, technocratic Palestinian authority, in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
However, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, roundly and publicly rejected that deal, demanding full disarmament before any withdrawal of troops – and dismissing any possibility of a Palestinian state in the process. More than that, despite the nominal ceasefire, Israel is taking control of a larger share of Gaza by the day: at present, it controls about 60 per cent of the region, and has said it will increase this to 70 per cent.
Kushner and the President’s daughter Ivanka Trump. Kushner’s private equity firm received $2 billion in investment from Saudi Arabia (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)Trump, desperate for a win after his Iran war stalled, has been trying to resurrect his Middle East peace plan – dispatching Kushner to deliver a deal. As US President, Trump has more than 13,000 professional diplomats at his disposal, but Trump has always preferred to keep things in the family.
Kushner has no formal role with the US government, has never been appointed or ratified by Congress, and is accountable to no one except the President, but is being trusted with some of the most sensitive diplomatic issues facing the federal government.
Some people might find a double standard in this. Between 2013 and 2018, Hunter Biden’s company made around $11 million (£8m) for his work with the Ukrainian company Burisma (among other clients), a story that became a decade-long scandal for his father, Joe Biden – even though there was never any evidence Biden Sr even met Burisma, let alone did them any favours, while Hunter Biden never did any work for the US government.
By contrast, Jared Kushner has received $2 billion (£1.5bn) in investment from Saudi Arabia alone, and is actively working as an international adviser while undertaking his role as his father-in-law’s off-books diplomat.
According to media reports, Kushner’s visit with Hamas was surprisingly friendly: the group reportedly restated its commitment to Trump’s peace plan, provided Israel did what the US promised it would. The meeting was followed by a joint statement by multiple Gulf states – including Kushner’s business partners – calling upon Israel to sign up to the deal.
That would appear to be the US engaging in a coordinated campaign of diplomatic pressure, working alongside Hamas and the Gulf states, against Israel – traditionally the USA’s closest allies in the region, something that would have been unimaginable even a year or two ago.
Blair and Kushner at a US-led workshop in Manama, Bahrain in June 2019 (Photo: BNA – Pool/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)This is the kind of desperate move sometimes required in diplomacy, but the trouble for both Trump and Kushner is that it has almost zero chance of working. The third anniversary of the deadly 7 October attacks is approaching, making it an awkward time politically for Israel to sign an agreement with Hamas, given Netanyahu had promised to wipe out the group entirely in the wake of the atrocity.
Even more pressingly, Israel has its elections later in October, and Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival – meaning the prospects of him changing his hardline stance on Gaza are even more remote than normal. Signing any kind of peace deal that involved concessions to Hamas would be out of character for Netanyahu at any time. Doing so when it would spell the end of his own political career is essentially an impossibility.
Donald Trump is a man obsessed with projecting strength on the world stage. He wants world leaders to say “how high” when he says “jump” – but instead, he’s increasingly yelling into the void.
Trump has alienated most of the USA’s traditional allies in Europe and across Nato. He had wooed several Gulf states to his side, but has burned their trust by putting them directly in the line of fire in his conflict with Iran. Relations between the US and Israel are the worst they have been in decades.
The President who became famous for “the art of the deal” now seems unable to get anything over the line. Try as they might, neither Jared Kushner nor Tony Blair is likely to break that trend for him.
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