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The Trump administration used Israel’s growing international isolation following its failed strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar to pressure Jerusalem into accepting a Gaza deal, Jared Kushner has revealed.
Describing the September 2025 attack on Doha as a “terrible thing” during a video address to the conference in Kyiv, Kushner, the US special envoy for peace, said the failed operation allowed the United States to “push” Israel into a deal it had initially resisted.
“Israel did the strike in Doha, which was a terrible thing,” Kushner said. “Obviously, it was unsuccessful as a military operation. And that led to Israel being globally isolated.”
Washington subsequently turned the diplomatic fallout to its advantage, however, he added.
“We used that dynamic in order to push them into a deal that now, today, they are quite happy with,” Kushner said, adding that Israeli officials had initially been “a little uncomfortable” with what Washington was demanding.
“Ultimately, it turned out to be great for them,” he added. “And it turned out to be great for the people of Gaza.”
Kushner was speaking at this year’s Yalta European Strategy, an international forum for discussing Ukraine's European future and global context.
In a statement released late on Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party appeared to respond to Kushner's comments, saying: “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."
Israel targeted senior Hamas officials meeting in Doha on September 9, 2025, but failed to kill the group’s negotiating leadership. Five lower-ranking Hamas members and a Qatari security officer were killed.
The attack sparked international condemnation and temporarily complicated negotiations. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff later said it had a “metastasising effect” because Washington lost Qatar’s confidence and Hamas leaders went underground.
However, US news site Axios subsequently reported that the strike helped to create the conditions for Trump’s Gaza plan by uniting Arab states and increasing pressure within Israel for an agreement.
The eventual breakthrough followed intensive US, Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish diplomacy, including an extraordinary direct meeting between Kushner, Witkoff and Hamas representatives in Egypt.
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