PM, Kushner, agree on deconfliction mechanism for reacting to Hamas threats in Gaza — report

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner agreed during their meeting today to establish a deconfliction mechanism for assessing emerging Hamas threats in Gaza, as Washington presses Israel to allow the terror group to demonstrate that it is serious about disarming, Channel 12 reports, citing a senior US official.

Netanyahu’s office said earlier that the sides agreed to establish two working groups focused on Gaza’s demilitarization and humanitarian needs during today’s meeting, but did not elaborate on the composition of or precise role of the groups.

The premier has expressed heavy skepticism about Hamas’s commitment to disarm, and brought to the meeting Shin Bet chief David Zini and IDF head of military intelligence Shlomi Binder to brief Kushner on alleged Hamas violations of Trump’s Gaza plan, another source familiar with the details of the meeting tells the Hebrew network.

Kushner made clear to Netanyahu that the reconstruction of Gaza would begin only after the demilitarization process was completed, and that the Board of Peace supports Israel’s right to act against imminent threats from Hamas, but that Israel should not define “imminent threats” too broadly, the US official says.

To that end, Kushner and Netanyahu agreed to establish a deconfliction mechanism for Gaza, to assess whether Israeli claims of emerging threats are genuine or could be resolved through non-military means, the official says.

Israeli military officers have previously said that rules of engagement in the territory are much tighter now than they had been before the disarmament plan was unveiled.

Kushner told Netanyahu that the Hamas disarmament process would see Hamas hand over its weapons to the Board-backed Palestinian technocratic government, which would transfer those weapons to the International Stabilization Force, a peacekeeping body meant to secure postwar Gaza, which would then destroy them, the official continues.

The US official says the gaps with Israel are not huge, but that Washington wants Jerusalem to take limited steps to give the process room to test whether Hamas actually begins surrendering its weapons.

During the meeting, Netanyahu pressed Kushner on why he chose to meet senior Hamas officials in Egypt yesterday, to which Kushner responded that he wanted to hear their commitment to disarmament directly from them, “face-to-face,” the US official says.

Kushner also told Netanyahu that his last in-person meeting with Hamas officials, alongside US special envoy Steve Witkoff, resulted in the October 2025 hostage release deal, the official adds.