Jared Kushner Concludes Middle East Meetings With No Major Movement on Gaza Peace Plan

US special envoy Jared Kushner's meetings with Israeli and Hamas leaders this week have drawn to a close with no significant movement on Washington's proposed Gaza peace plan.

Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, flew out to the Middle East to meet with Hamas' political chief Khalil al-Hayya and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after the latter publicly rejected the latest 15-point roadmap aimed at ending the conflict earlier this month.

The plan, announced by Trump's Board of Peace in late July, aims to secure the complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza while requiring Hamas to disarm and relinquish control of governance of the territory. The militant group has agreed to the plan, while Netanyahu has said that any withdrawal would depend on Hamas "genuinely" disarming.

Following the meeting between Kushner and Netanyahu - who is gearing up for Israel's October elections - a senior Israeli official told news agency AFP that the two sides had "agreed that no redeployment or reconstruction would take place in the Gaza Strip before Hamas is disarmed throughout Gaza."

"It was also agreed that the first step toward the demilitarisation of the Strip would be to require Hamas to hand over its weapons for decommissioning under the supervision of an American general," they added.

In a statement, Netanyahu's office called the meeting "deep and constructive," adding that both Israel and the Board of Peace were "determined" that the "disarmament and demilitarisation of Gaza" needed to be "prompt and completed before any reconstruction happens."

It said they had also agreed on the creation of two working groups, one focused on disarmament and demilitarisation and the other on "sanitation, clean water and other public health issues" for Gazans.

Speaking to Fox News later on Monday, Kushner suggested that there could be progress on getting Hamas to disarm within "as little as 30 days."

"We could be seeing progress in as little as 30 days, hopefully starting to take some of the weapons out and hopefully, you know, filling in some of the tunnels," he said.

The meetings came as Foreign Ministers from Turkey, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates issued a joint statement on Sunday condemning Israel's rejection of Washington's Gaza plan.

"Rejecting the Road Map constitutes an explicit refusal to proceed with the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan, and directly threatens to derail the extensive efforts exerted by US President Trump to bring an end to the war in Gaza and establish the conditions for lasting peace," the statement reads.