Jared Kushner’s visit to Israel was mainly to talk about Gaza. He should have come with a much broader message from US President Donald Trump.
The immediate American objective should not be to resolve every outstanding issue between Israel and the Palestinians before the Israeli election. That is unrealistic. Nor should Washington expect to complete the regional peace architecture it hopes to build in the coming weeks.
The task now is simpler and more urgent: Do not allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government to create new facts, ignite new fronts, and destroy the possibility of regional diplomacy before Israelis go to the polls.
Kushner’s visit came at a particularly sensitive moment. The Trump administration is trying to advance its Gaza initiative, including a transfer of civilian governance to a Palestinian technocratic body, Israeli withdrawal linked to security arrangements, and reconstruction. Netanyahu has publicly resisted important elements of the American plan, especially the sequencing between Israeli withdrawal and Hamas disarmament.
Gaza is only part of the problem
But Gaza is only one part of the problem. The West Bank is deteriorating rapidly. Settlement expansion has reached unprecedented levels and settler violence has sharply increased.
In Kusra, Israeli troops recently clashed with settlers while trying to dismantle an outpost established directly in front of Palestinian homes. The settlers resisted the army, the army gave in to the settlers, and Palestinian residents described being trapped and terrorized for days. The Israeli army is essentially providing protection for the violent settlers.
But Kusra is not the issue. It is a symptom of the issue.
The real problem is that the settler movement, backed by powerful members of Netanyahu’s government, is pursuing a clear political project: to make Palestinian statehood impossible by creating irreversible facts on the ground.
Members of Netanyahu’s government, apparently with the support of the prime minister, are working overtime to create the provocations that would lead to an explosion of Palestinian violence, providing the pretext to launch a massive Israeli military operation against the Palestinians in the West Bank. This is what Netanyahu believes he needs prior to the Israeli elections.
Trump needs to understand that this is not only a Palestinian problem. It is becoming an American strategic problem. Trump wants regional peace. His administration wants Israel integrated more deeply into the Arab world. It wants Saudi-Israeli normalization. It wants Arab governments to invest in Gaza’s reconstruction and participate in new security arrangements. It wants a Palestinian governing alternative to Hamas. It wants a Middle East defined increasingly by trade, investment, and cooperation rather than permanent war.
The settler movement and their political backers in the Israeli government want something fundamentally different. They want permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, continuing settlement expansion, further Palestinian displacement, and ultimately the elimination of any viable territorial basis for Palestinian independence.
Those two visions cannot coexist.
The United States cannot ask Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to participate in a new regional order while Israel’s government simultaneously empowers people whose stated objective is to prevent a Palestinian political future.
Nor can Washington tell Palestinians that they must choose a political alternative to Hamas while allowing Israel to demonstrate every day that peaceful Palestinian politics leads nowhere. If we want Palestinians to reject Hamas, there has to be something credible for them to choose instead.
That does not require a final-status agreement tomorrow. It does require preserving the possibility of one.
No new fires
For the period between now and the Israeli elections, Trump should impose a very simple rule on Netanyahu: No new fires.
First, Netanyahu must rein in the settlers. Not another statement of condemnation after an attack. Not another promise that violence is being investigated. Actual enforcement. Trump should demand that Israelis who attack Palestinians should be arrested and prosecuted. Palestinian villages should be protected. Unauthorized outposts should be removed. Government ministers should not be allowed to turn ideologically motivated land seizures into national policy.
The state must reassert its authority. Israel cannot demand “one authority and one gun” from Palestinians while enabling armed Israelis who behave as if the laws of the state do not apply to them.
This is not to equate settlers with Hamas. Hamas committed the atrocities of October 7 and has deliberately targeted Israeli civilians. The comparison is about something else entirely: the monopoly of legitimate force. A functioning state cannot allow private ideological movements to use violence to determine borders.
Second, Trump must prevent Netanyahu from escalating Gaza unnecessarily before the election. The future of Gaza is unresolved. The American plan remains under negotiation. There are difficult questions involving Israeli withdrawal, security arrangements, Palestinian governance, reconstruction, and the future of Hamas’s weapons.
Those questions can continue to be negotiated.
What must not happen is another Israeli military escalation that creates new realities on the ground, expands occupation, undermines emerging Palestinian institutions, or makes withdrawal even harder after the election.
The objective for the next weeks should be stabilization. Hold the line. Stop the provocations. Build the mechanisms that may eventually allow a different reality to emerge.
Then let Israelis vote.
Third, the same restraint must apply to Lebanon. The danger of renewed war there is real. Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon on August 15 killed at least 11 people in the most serious escalation since the June truce. Israel said it was retaliating against Hezbollah; Lebanese officials said civilians, including children, were among those killed. The broader US-backed framework is supposed to lead toward Hezbollah’s disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal, but it remains fragile.
Israel obviously has legitimate security concerns regarding Hezbollah. But legitimate security concerns do not mean that every military response is strategically wise. Over the next weeks, neither Israel nor Hezbollah should be permitted to drag the region back toward full-scale war.
This is where American power matters. Trump does not need Netanyahu to make peace before the Israeli election. He needs Netanyahu not to destroy the possibility of peace after it. The distinction is crucial.
Israel is going into an election while Netanyahu is simultaneously prime minister, wartime leader, and candidate. Every decision involving Gaza, Lebanon, or the West Bank will inevitably be viewed through the lens of domestic politics. That gives Washington every reason to prevent Israeli electoral calculations from dictating American regional strategy.
After the election, everything can be reassessed. Who governs Israel? What coalition is possible? What does the Israeli public want after three years of war? What is possible in Gaza? What kind of Palestinian leadership can emerge? What is Saudi Arabia prepared to do? How far can the regional normalization process go? Those are questions for the day after Israelis vote.
But if the weeks before the election are used to expand settlements, tolerate settler violence, provoke another explosion in Gaza, or slide into renewed war in Lebanon, the political landscape after the election may be dramatically worse than the one we have today.
That is why Trump’s messages to Netanyahu matter: Rein in the settlers. Stop unilateral moves in the West Bank. Do not reignite Gaza. Do not allow Lebanon to return to war. Do not create irreversible facts during an election campaign.
The United States should make clear that it will reassess the entire regional strategy after Israelis choose their next government. Until then, the objective is preservation.
Trump’s immediate Middle East mission is not to make the final deal. It is to prevent Netanyahu and his partners from burning down the possibility of one.
The writer is the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization and the co-head of the Alliance for Two States.