Kushner to Mideast for Talks on Gaza   08/14 06:56

   President Donald Trump's son-in-law and negotiator Jared Kushner will travel 
to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an end to the conflict 
in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump administration ran into 
Israeli opposition.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Donald Trump's son-in-law and negotiator Jared 
Kushner will travel to the Middle East next week to try to advance plans for an 
end to the conflict in Gaza after a deal recently announced by the Trump 
administration ran into Israeli opposition.

   An official with the Board of Peace, the body Trump established to oversee 
the fragile ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, said Kushner, board high 
representative Nickolay Mladenov, and executive board member and former British 
Prime Minister Tony Blair would arrive in Israel on Sunday.

   The group will then travel to Cairo, where meetings of a Palestinian 
technocratic group set to assume control of Gaza under a U.S.-brokered 
ceasefire deal have been taking place for the past several months, the official 
said. The trip was reported earlier by Axios.

   The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because planning for 
details of the trip has not yet been finalized, said the meetings would 
demonstrate the determination of Trump and the Board of Peace to "see peace, 
prosperity and sustainable security emerge" in a demilitarized Gaza where Hamas 
has ceded control to allow reconstruction of the devastated territory.

   But Israel has dismissed a recent deal announced by Trump for Hamas to 
disarm and Israel to withdraw its forces from the Palestinian territory, 
marking a rare public display of friction with the Trump administration. Though 
Hamas accepted the plan to decommission its weapons, Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu said in recent days that Israel would not withdraw until Hamas has 
completely disarmed.

   The deal had been seen as a potential breakthrough for ending the war in 
Gaza. The agreement was based on an October ceasefire that ended major military 
operations and brought about the release of the remaining hostages held in 
Gaza, but it has stalled on other fronts.