Kushner: US used Israel’s isolation after ‘terrible’ Doha strike to secure Gaza deal

US President Donald Trump’s envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has said that the US clinched the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal by leveraging the “global isolation” Israel faced after its “terrible” strike on Hamas’s headquarters in Doha last September.

The strike on September 9, 2025, targeting Hamas leadership in the Qatari capital killed a security officer and five lower-ranking Hamas members, but left leaders of the terror group relatively unscathed.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was pressed by Washington to publicly apologize to the Qatari leadership, and the ceasefire in Gaza was reached soon thereafter.

Kushner, who has represented the US in talks on Gaza, Iran and Ukraine despite holding no official government position, made his comments Friday while speaking remotely to the Yalta European Security Conference. They were publicized on Sunday.

Asked about talks with Russia, Kushner used the Gaza ceasefire deal to illustrate that extraneous events can help pave the way to diplomatic breakthroughs, but only if diplomats have “done the work” to reach an agreement.

“Look at the deal we got done… in Gaza,” Kushner said. “We worked on that for nine months, and we’d created what happens after the war… what would be the security guarantees, what would be the humanitarian efforts.

“Then, actually, we used the errant strike,” Kushner said. “Israel did the strike in Doha, which was a terrible thing… it was unsuccessful as a military operation, and that led to Israel being globally isolated, and we used that dynamic in order to push them into a deal that now, today, they are quite happy with, but at the time, they were a little uncomfortable with… but ultimately it turned out to be great for them and great for the people of Gaza.

“Had we not done all the prework… when the opening came, nothing would have occurred,” Kushner said.

In a Sunday night statement that did not name Kushner, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party hit back at the comments.

“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,” said the party, which is fighting an uphill battle to maintain power in the October 27 election.

Jared Kushner on Gaza:

Israel did the strike in Doha, which was a terrible thing. It was unsuccessful as a military operation, and that led to Israel being globally isolated.

And we used that dynamic in order to push them into a deal that now, today, they’re quite happy with.… pic.twitter.com/B6xLZsyzr6

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 13, 2026

Kushner previously told “60 Minutes” in October, after the Gaza deal went into effect, that Israel’s strike on Doha led Trump to realize “that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.”

Trump said at the time that he was “very unhappy” with Israel over the strike on Washington’s “strong” ally Qatar, and committed the US to defend the Gulf state in case of a future attack.

When Netanyahu traveled to the White House in late September 2025 to announce Israel’s agreement to the Gaza deal, Trump arranged for the premier to apologize to Qatar.

Days later, Israel and Hamas sealed a ceasefire and hostage release deal that saw all 20 remaining living hostages freed on October 13. The bodies still held by Hamas were returned within a short period as well.

The ceasefire brought an end to large-scale fighting but not to intermittent Israeli strikes in Gaza. Hamas has accused Israel of violating the agreement, while Israel has accused Hamas of repeatedly breaching it and continuing efforts to rebuild its military capabilities, saying this justified the strikes.

Gaza remains bisected into Israeli- and Hamas-controlled areas, and talks to bring about Hamas’s disarmament and the territory’s reconstruction have made only limited progress.