WASHINGTON, United States – Jared Kushner has offered a rare public account of the pressure Washington applied to Israel during negotiations that produced the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire and hostage agreement, saying the United States deliberately used Israel’s diplomatic isolation following its failed strike against Hamas leaders in Doha as negotiating leverage.
Speaking remotely to the Yalta European Strategy conference in Ukraine, Kushner described Israel’s September 9, 2025 operation in Qatar as a military failure that created an unexpected diplomatic opening for American negotiators.
“Israel did the strike in Doha, which was a terrible thing,” Kushner said. “It was unsuccessful as a military operation.”
Kushner said the consequences extended beyond the failure to eliminate the senior Hamas leaders targeted in the operation.
The strike contributed to Israel becoming increasingly isolated internationally, he said, and the Trump administration recognized that the resulting pressure could be used to move negotiations forward.
“We used that dynamic in order to push them into a deal,” Kushner said.
His comments provide an unusually candid glimpse into tensions between Washington and Jerusalem during negotiations that eventually led to the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages and an end to large-scale fighting in Gaza.
From Military Setback To Diplomatic Leverage
The Israeli operation targeted senior Hamas leaders gathered in Doha, where they were reportedly considering an American ceasefire proposal.
The senior Hamas figures survived. Five lower-ranking Hamas members and a Qatari security officer were killed, according to reports.
The operation triggered international condemnation and angered Qatar, which had played a central mediating role throughout negotiations between Israel and Hamas. President Donald Trump publicly expressed displeasure with the Israeli action.
Kushner said Washington subsequently turned that setback into an opportunity.
Israel was initially uncomfortable with what American negotiators asked it to accept, according to Kushner, but he argued the eventual agreement ultimately worked to Israel’s benefit.
He also said the arrangement benefited Gaza, pointing to efforts to establish new governance there and advance the demilitarization process.
Kushner stressed that the Doha episode alone did not produce the agreement.
American negotiators had already spent approximately nine months developing plans addressing postwar security arrangements, humanitarian issues and what would follow the fighting, he said.
That groundwork meant Washington was prepared when the diplomatic opening appeared.
“Had we not done all the prework,” Kushner said, the opportunity created by the Doha fallout would not have produced the same result.
Likud Rejects Kushner’s Interpretation
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party publicly pushed back against Kushner’s account.
The party presented a substantially different interpretation of what brought Hamas to the negotiating table.
Likud argued that Netanyahu’s decision to intensify Israeli military operations in Gaza, combined with the strike against Hamas leadership in Qatar and pressure exerted by Trump, forced Hamas to abandon previous demands and agree to release the remaining hostages.
“The prime minister’s decision to send the IDF into Gaza City and to strike the Hamas leadership in Qatar, together with the intense pressure exerted by President Trump, are what led Hamas to drop its demands and agree to release all the hostages remaining in Gaza,” Likud said.
The competing accounts present two different interpretations of the same diplomatic episode.
Kushner portrays the failed Doha operation and Israel’s subsequent international isolation as leverage Washington used against the Israeli government.
Likud argues that Israeli military pressure, including the Doha operation itself, increased pressure on Hamas and helped convince its leadership that it could not evade Israeli action by operating from Qatar.
Both sides credit Trump with playing an important role in bringing the negotiations to a conclusion.
A Turning Point In The Gaza Negotiations
The dispute also sheds new light on a particularly sensitive period in U.S.-Israel relations.
Following the Doha strike, Washington pressed Netanyahu to apologize to Qatar. When the Israeli prime minister visited the White House later that month, Trump arranged a call in which Netanyahu apologized to the Qatari leadership.
Israel and Hamas subsequently reached the ceasefire and hostage agreement in October 2025.
The 20 remaining living hostages were released on October 13. The remains of hostages still held in Gaza were subsequently returned.
The agreement ended large-scale fighting but did not resolve every issue surrounding Gaza.
Intermittent Israeli strikes have continued, while Israel and Hamas have accused one another of violations. Negotiations surrounding Hamas’s disarmament, reconstruction and the territory’s longer-term governance have also continued.
Kushner’s latest comments matter because they go beyond the public displays of U.S.-Israel cooperation that surrounded the agreement and describe some of the pressure taking place behind the scenes.
The Trump administration, according to Kushner’s own account, did not merely mediate between Israel and Hamas.
When Israel’s failed operation in Doha produced a diplomatic crisis, Washington saw leverage and used it.
Israel’s governing Likud Party now says that is not the full story.
The disagreement leaves an important historical question surrounding the 2025 Gaza agreement: whether Israel was ultimately brought closer to a deal by the international pressure generated by the failed Doha operation, as Kushner argues, or whether Israeli military pressure on Hamas was itself instrumental in forcing the terrorist organization to compromise.
What is now clear is that Washington and Jerusalem do not entirely agree on how the breakthrough happened.
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