Scoop: Inside Trump's Gaza meeting with Tony Blair and Jared Kushner
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Trump in the Oval Office. Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The meeting President Trump convened on Wednesday to discuss a post-war plan for Gaza involved two high-profile invited guests, Jared Kushner and Tony Blair, and an unexpected third one: Israeli official Ron Dermer.
Why it matters: Dermer told the assembled senior officials that Israel doesn't want to occupy Gaza long-term, but needs an acceptable alternative to Hamas to govern the enclave. Kushner and Blair got Trump's blessing to keep developing such a plan, but right now they don't have an answer as to who would take over.
Behind the scenes: Wednesday's meeting lasted over an hour, with Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and several other senior administration officials in the room.
- Kushner and Blair presented ideas they had discussed previously with Witkoff and others, but never with Trump himself.
- "They tried to give an idea of how Gaza could be governed and how you create an environment for investment so that reconstruction can happen. The goal was to run the ideas by Trump to see if he likes them and want to move forward, so that Witkoff and Rubio can use them," a source with direct knowledge said.
Towards the end of the meeting, Trump wanted to get the Israeli input and asked his team to call in Dermer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's most powerful adviser.
- Dermer was in the White House to present Rubio and Witkoff with Israel's operational plan for occupying Gaza City and for a humanitarian surge during the operation, two sources with direct knowledge said.
- "The president wanted to hear from him what are Israel's needs and red lines in a day-after scenario," one source said.
- According to the source, Dermer made clear that Israel doesn't want to occupy Gaza for good and doesn't want to expel the Palestinian population, despite proposals from some in the government to do both. He stressed that Israel wants to hand over Gaza to someone else who is not Hamas.
- "Dermer's message was: As long as our conditions are met, we will be flexible about everything else," the source said.
The big picture: A "day-after" plan for Gaza will be a key component of any diplomatic initiative to end a war that has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians over two years of fighting.
- But rebuilding an enclave that is utterly destroyed and designing a political and security architecture that all sides can live with will be extremely difficult.
- Wednesday's meeting at the White House didn't end with any clear decisions, but clarified that the key question mark remains who will be able to take over Gaza instead of Hamas, the sources said.
State of play: Israel's operation to attack and occupy Gaza City — which Trump has expressed support for — is expected to ramp up over the next few weeks.
- Hamas has accepted a ceasefire and hostage deal proposal put forward by the Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and Netanyahu is under strong domestic and global pressure to reciprocate.
- For now, Netanyahu is pushing ahead, and it's unclear if the discussions around day-after planning will have any influence on his decision-making.
What to watch: A source with knowledge of Kushner's and Blair's work said they're still in the middle of the process and it's unclear how long they'll need to finalize a detailed plan.
- For one thing, they have not yet settled on a proposal for who would govern Gaza or ensure security there.
- But the White House sees the plan as an important tool that needs to be ready when the Israeli operation ends.
- "The goal is for the U.S. to lead the effort to find an internationally accepted governance structure in Gaza that will allow Israel to pull out without deteriorating back to the old reality again from a security standpoint," the source said.
