Firing back at Kushner, Netanyahu’s Likud insists Doha strike was successful in helping free hostages

By Nava Freiberg

You will receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

You will no longer receive email alerts from this author. Manage alert preferences on your profile page

13 September 2026, 10:47 pm

4 Edit

Nava Freiberg is The Times of Israel's deputy diplomatic correspondent.

Left to right: White House adviser Jared Kushner, Board of Peace envoy Nickolay Mladenov, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP, Chaim Goldberg/FLASH90)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party rejects remarks by US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner that Washington used Israel’s “global isolation” after its strike that failed to kill Hamas leaders in Doha as leverage to broker a hostage-ceasefire deal with the Palestinian terror group, insisting that Israel’s military actions together with pressure from Trump led to the deal.

“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,” the party says in a Hebrew-language statement.

Netanyahu has repeatedly credited the combination of Israeli military pressure and US diplomatic pressure with securing the October 2025 hostage-ceasefire deal.

Kushner stated at a security conference earlier this evening that the “errant” strike allowed the Trump administration to pressure Israel into the deal, which he said, “today, [the Israelis] are quite happy with.”