Journalism of Courage
Last Friday, when Jared Kushner heard that Hamas would begin talks to release Israeli hostages, he was taking calls at his mansion, which sits on a man-made island just north of Miami. He jumped into his car and drove 20 minutes to another mansion — this one owned by billionaire Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace envoy.
In those crucial moments, the Trump administration’s diplomatic power centre was not in Washington but in one of Florida’s wealthiest enclaves.
The two property developers, tasked with closing the deal on a key part of Trump’s foreign policy ambitions, got to work setting up a command centre, where they made and received calls from stakeholders — including an impatient president and cabinet members in the Israeli government.
The stage had been set for a peace deal earlier that week, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed with Trump on a 20-point proposal for pursuing a peace agreement.
With terms that largely favoured Israel, it was still uncertain whether Hamas would agree to sign on and release hostages or give up control of the enclave. As the deadline for Hamas to respond drew closer, Trump warned Hamas fighters that thousands had already been killed and many more would be if they refused to agree to a deal.
Hours later, Hamas said it would begin talks to release hostages.
While working alongside Witkoff in Miami, Kushner’s advice to the Israelis was not to worry about the rest of the militant group’s statement, which did little to ease Israeli concerns that Hamas would refuse to give up its weapons or political control of the Gaza Strip. Kushner focused on the first part of the statement — the indication that hostages could soon come home.
“Steve and I said to Israel, ‘We encourage you to be positive as well,’” Kushner recalled in an interview. On phone calls, the Israelis had told them that Hamas would outright reject any deal. “‘This is a time to be positive,’” Kushner reiterated.
Hours later, Netanyahu’s office said it would agree to begin carrying out the first phase of Trump’s peace plan. On Thursday, Israel’s government approved the agreement, just after Kushner and Witkoff addressed the Israeli cabinet and discussed the deal.
In his attempt to end the Israel-Hamas war, Trump has not turned to career diplomats to get the job done. His advisers say he is not immersed in the details of what a long-term peace agreement might look like. Instead, he has relied on his son-in-law, Kushner, to step in and add momentum to negotiations that Witkoff had been pursuing for months.
Kushner, 44, had built diplomatic relationships in Arab countries while serving as an adviser during Trump’s first term. He became a key architect of the Abraham Accords — a set of diplomatic agreements that normalised relations between Israel and three Arab states — giving him an understanding of the region’s complexities and the key players who operate within it.
Kushner travelled to Egypt on Tuesday alongside Witkoff, where they found success. The pair joined a group of mediators who had already been working there for days to persuade Hamas to disarm and hand over Israeli hostages taken during terrorist attacks two years ago.
The two spent the flight strategising about how the deal might fall apart and what they could do to salvage it. When the two men work together, Kushner is often drafting plans while Witkoff works the phones.
Hours after Kushner arrived in Egypt, Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement that could spell the end of a two-year conflict that began when Hamas attacked Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. The Israeli military has since killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including civilians and combatants, according to local health officials.
“Jared is a very smart guy,” Trump said on Thursday.
Trained in the cut-throat world of New York property, Kushner and Witkoff think of themselves as “deal guys” working for the ultimate dealmaker. Their approach is simple: get to “yes” first, and sort out the details later. The two have spent weeks together, crisscrossing Miami, then the country, and now the world, in pursuit of peace. The rebuilding of Gaza is also in their sights.
“The experience that Steve and I have as deal guys is that you have to understand people,” Kushner said. “You have to be able to get the bottom line out of them, and then see who you think is playing games, and how much room you have to push things.”
He added: “A lot of the people who do this are history professors or diplomats because they have a lot of experience. It’s just different being deal guys — a different sport altogether.”
Kushner has received bipartisan praise for his role in the negotiations, but as an unpaid volunteer, he is not subject to the same laws and disclosure requirements as a government employee. Kushner also has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, enriching himself as he builds deep diplomatic relationships with leaders across the region. His critics have said he is evading bureaucratic safeguards designed to prevent conflicts of interest.
As for questions about Kushner’s business dealings in the same region where he is negotiating peace, the White House has insisted there is no issue.
“I think it’s frankly despicable that you’re trying to suggest that it’s inappropriate for Jared Kushner — who is widely respected around the world and has great trust and relationships with these critical partners — to strike a 20-point, comprehensive, detailed peace plan that no other administration would ever be able to achieve,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, last week when asked about his involvement.
She added: “We are very proud of that plan, and we hope Hamas will accept it, because it will lead to a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East.”
Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is almost entirely funded by overseas investors and has received money from government wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
“In order for the next stage of this agreement to succeed, Jared Kushner needs to stop treating this issue as a property deal and start focusing on political and human rights,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland.
If Kushner seems like a familiar face in the Trump White House, that’s because he never really left. He was an unpaid senior adviser to Trump during the president’s first term, as was his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter. Both faced intense criticism from Democrats for failing to act as moderating influences on Donald Trump, particularly regarding his immigration policies.
The stream of negative headlines about their unpopularity was so constant that Trump would sometimes joke that instead of marrying football player Tom Brady, his daughter had married Kushner. “Jared hasn’t been so good for me,” Trump would remark at times.
Relations have since improved.
Kushner began focusing on issues such as prison reform and normalising relations between Israel and several Arab nations. After leaving the White House, his private equity firm profited from relationships with some of those same countries. His father, Charles Kushner, received a presidential pardon for tax evasion and witness retaliation, among other crimes. The elder Kushner, a campaign donor, is now the US ambassador to France.
Jared Kushner has remained in his father-in-law’s orbit as a volunteer adviser and has long abandoned any pretence of being the one to restrain Trump’s impulses. Instead, he has leaned heavily into Trump’s instinct-driven approach to achieving peace in Gaza.
Roughly eight months ago, Kushner began working with Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, on plans for a post-war Gaza. In August, the two met with Trump and his top aides to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip. In the weeks following that Oval Office meeting, Kushner has emerged as a key figure in the negotiations, working closely with Israel and Arab nations.
“This is way more than I anticipated,” Kushner said in an interview. “I think there’s a chance that when I get home, my wife changes the locks on the house.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
