Kushner-Netanyahu talks stall as Israel's security minister calls for escalated Gaza killings

In Jerusalem on Monday, Jared Kushner sat down with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss a reconstruction plan for Gaza that has, by all accounts, gone nowhere. The meeting itself was framed as productive—Netanyahu's office called it "deep and constructive," and a Board of Peace official described it as "lengthy, in depth and very productive." Two working groups were established: one to handle disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza before any rebuilding could begin, another to address sanitation and public health. But the choreography of optimism could not mask the fundamental impasse underneath.

The sticking point remains what it has always been: how to get Hamas to surrender its weapons, when that surrender would happen, and what happens to those weapons afterward. Netanyahu has made clear that Israeli forces will not leave Gaza until Hamas and other armed groups are completely disarmed. Trump's proposal, which Netanyahu rejected earlier this month, would have seen Israeli troops gradually replaced by an International Stabilization Force working alongside a new Palestinian police force. Hamas said it agreed to the plan. Netanyahu did not. Israeli troops currently occupy roughly 60 percent of the enclave.

The timing of Kushner's visit was shadowed by remarks made days earlier by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister and a far-right hardliner from the "Jewish Power" party. In a podcast interview that went live Saturday evening, Ben-Gvir called for "targeted killings" of Palestinians in Gaza—specifically, he said, "30, 40 people every night." He was not limiting this to members of militant groups. "There are people there who are not worthy of life," he said. "They shouldn't live. They're not even people." Ben-Gvir is part of Netanyahu's government, though he has said he disagrees with the prime minister's post-war plans for Gaza. The remarks have been presented to the UN's International Court of Justice as evidence of genocidal intent. Israel denies that its actions in Gaza constitute genocide.

Iran's deputy foreign minister condemned the comments on social media, writing that Ben-Gvir's statements about expelling Palestinians and settlement construction "must be recorded and preserved for the day of reckoning and for the trial of these criminals." The international response underscored how fragile the diplomatic moment had become—Kushner was in Jerusalem trying to build consensus on reconstruction while one of Netanyahu's own ministers was publicly calling for mass killings.

Meanwhile, a separate negotiation was unfolding in the Persian Gulf. Iran said it was finalizing a joint statement with Oman on how to manage ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway that Iran had effectively closed at the start of the Middle East war on February 28. According to Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, an understanding had been reached on transit routes—ships would apparently enter closer to Iran and exit closer to Oman, with no fees or tolls expected. The talks had progressed slowly, but both sides seemed intent on reaching a deal.

This separate Iran-Oman arrangement was happening as a 60-day negotiating period between the United States and Iran expired with no extension announced and no agreement reached. Trump had reportedly told reporters that Washington was not seeking an extension of the Memorandum of Understanding. Yet Kushner, speaking to Fox News after his meeting with Netanyahu, said talks with parts of the Iranian government had been "more robust than ever," though he acknowledged no agreement had been reached to end the war. A senior Iranian official, meanwhile, told Reuters that Tehran would shift its policy from defensive to "fully offensive" if diplomacy failed.

Trump himself had made his position on the Strait of Hormuz unmistakable. He told Fox News that if Oman got in the way of US attempts to secure a deal on the waterway, "we'll bomb the s*** out of them." He has repeatedly insisted that the strait is under US control despite traffic remaining restricted, and on Friday he had claimed he would declare it part of US territory. Trump also said his administration was in direct communication with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps through a back-channel, describing them as "good poker players" but saying they were "dying" and should "put up the white flag and surrender."

The picture that emerged from Monday's developments was one of multiple negotiations happening in parallel, each stalled or fragile. Kushner and Netanyahu were trying to build a framework for Gaza that neither side fully accepted. Iran and Oman were working on a maritime agreement that the United States viewed as a threat to its interests. And Trump was threatening military action against a country trying to broker peace. Netanyahu, facing an October 27 general election with some polls putting him behind centrist challenger Gadi Eisenkot, had little political room to compromise. The working groups established in Jerusalem might produce documents, but the distance between the parties suggested that documents alone would not be enough.