Israel agrees to ‘working groups’ for Board of Peace’s demilitarization of Gaza after Kushner meets with Netanyahu and Hamas

"Working groups" is the phrase that should make everyone sit up straight, because in diplomacy that term usually means "we agreed to keep talking so nobody has to admit we disagree." Kushner flew in, sat down with Netanyahu, then reportedly with Hamas, and came away with a commitment to more meetings about demilitarizing Gaza. Not disarmament. Not a timeline. A process for discussing a process.

That doesn't mean it's worthless. Getting Netanyahu back to the table after Israel had "repeatedly" balked is real movement, and Tony Blair and Mladenov showing up alongside Kushner signals this isn't a solo improv act, it's an actual structure trying to hold. But we've watched enough of these Gaza frameworks collapse under their own vocabulary to know that "Board of Peace" and "working groups" are doing a lot of heavy lifting for very little concrete commitment. Hamas has never voluntarily disarmed anything in its history. Getting them to nod along in a room with Kushner in it is not the same as watching rockets get decommissioned.

What actually matters here is leverage, and right now that leverage is American, personal, and Trump-branded. Kushner has relationships in that region that career State Department staffers spent decades failing to build. If this is the vehicle that finally pries a real demilitarization commitment out of both sides, good. But the administration should say so plainly and set a clock on it, because "working groups" without deadlines is how Gaza policy has died a dozen times before.