Envoy says US believes Hamas acting in good faith, searching for remaining hostage bodies; Witkoff: Netanyahu’s phone call with Qatari PM was ‘pivotal’ step in reaching Gaza deal

Israel must start aiding the Palestinians and help improve their quality of life if it wants to become fully integrated into the Middle East “now that the war is over,” said Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, in an interview alongside US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.

“The biggest message that we’ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better,” Kushner told CBS’s 60 Minutes in the interview broadcast Sunday evening.

He said that he and Witkoff were “just getting started” with relaying this message to Israel.

Regarding Kushner’s vision for the Palestinian people, and what he believes allowing them to “thrive” would look like, Kushner said that the US is “focused on creating a situation for joint security and economic opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians so that they can live side by side in a durable way.”

“What you end up calling it over time, we’ll allow the Palestinians to determine that themselves,” he said, in answer to a question about a path to Palestinian statehood.

The discussion with CBS was the first wide-ranging interview that Kushner and Witkoff have given since the start of the first stage of a ceasefire they brokered that broadly saw an end to the fighting in Gaza and the release of all the living hostages held in the Strip.

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