The meeting in Jerusalem between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s envoy, comes at a potentially decisive moment for the Gaza conflict. Kushner’s talks with Hamas representatives in Egypt, followed by his meeting with Netanyahu, suggest that Washington is trying to move beyond crisis management and toward implementation of Trump’s broader roadmap for Gaza.

From the perspective of a political scientist, the significance of these contacts lies less in the symbolism of the meetings than in the political mechanism Washington is attempting to build. The central problem is no longer simply how to negotiate a ceasefire. It is how to create a sequence of reciprocal steps in which neither Israel nor Hamas has to make the first irreversible concession without receiving a credible security or political benefit in return.

The current impasse illustrates precisely why this is so difficult. Hamas has indicated conditional willingness to move toward disarmament, while Israel insists that Hamas must be fully disarmed before an Israeli military withdrawal. The American proposal seeks to address this dilemma by linking the two processes: verified Hamas disarmament would take place alongside a phased Israeli withdrawal, while Gaza would gradually move toward civilian administration under a Palestinian technocratic structure.

This sequencing could provide the most realistic path toward de-escalation. Neither side currently trusts the other enough to act on faith. Israel fears that a withdrawal without genuine disarmament would allow Hamas or other armed groups to rebuild. Hamas, meanwhile, fears that surrendering its military capabilities before Israel withdraws would leave it without leverage and without guarantees that the conflict will actually end.

A credible monitoring mechanism involving the United States, Egypt, Qatar and other regional........

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