Jared Kushner travels to Israel next week, and the purpose of the trip is simpler than diplomatic language allows anyone to say: to persuade Benjamin Netanyahu not to block the plan for disarming Hamas in Gaza.

Nickolay Mladenov, the Board of Peace envoy for Gaza, is going with him. The exact date has not been fixed, which in itself says something about how confident either side feels ahead of the meeting.

The request they are carrying is specific: that Israel again halt its attacks on Gaza and honour the humanitarian obligations taken on under the ceasefire reached in October 2025. The logic of the Board of Peace, chaired by US president Donald Trump, is that only then can it turn to Hamas and demand the surrender of weapons. First one side stops, then the other disarms.

The elections are the real calendar

An Arab diplomat said what everyone knows but few say out loud: there will be no progress until Netanyahu publicly withdraws his opposition to the deal, and that is unlikely to happen with Israel's 27 October elections approaching. According to the same source, both Kushner and Mladenov are frustrated by the Israeli prime minister's public stance.

That is where the whole story sits. It is not about whether the plan is good or bad, nor about whether Hamas would hand over its weapons. It is about one electoral cycle dictating the pace of a process that lives depend on. If Netanyahu calculates that giving ground costs him votes, the plan waits until November.

Kushner has not been in Israel since last year, when he mediated the October agreement on the release of hostages and the ceasefire. Back then he came and left with a result. The question now is whether the same approach works when the other side has already started counting voters instead of days.