As the chief U.S. architect behind the Abraham Accords he did more than broker diplomacy; he reset the strategic calculus of a region weary of stasis

History asks rare things of men: to see beyond the day’s outrage, to stitch broken frameworks into durable institutions, and to bear the loneliness of long flights and longer negotiations so others can sleep in safety. Jared Kushner answered such a calling. As the chief U.S. architect behind the Abraham Accords — the 2020 normalization agreements that first bound the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to Israel and were later joined by Morocco and Sudan — he did more than broker diplomacy; he reset the strategic calculus of a region weary of stasis.To compare contemporary statesmen is dangerous and reductive, yet the scale of Kushner’s achievement invites a straight line of comparison to the last American who re-ordered the Middle East’s strategic map: Henry Kissinger. Like Kissinger, Kushner reframed the interests of states, not merely their grievances; he turned possibility into momentum and momentum into policy. The Abraham Accords proved that the Arab-Israeli equation could change not because grievances vanished, but because sound strategic incentives were assembled and sold as mutual gain.But peace is not an event; it is a process that demands follow-through. The Accords were never meant to be a comfortable end point for elites. They were intended as the first act in a longer project — expanding reconciliation into cooperation, and cooperation into shared prosperity. That ambition, of a corridor of wealth and opportunity linking markets from the Gulf to the Mediterranean and beyond, is being renewed even now as States discuss widening the Accords’ circle.

That is precisely why a man like Jared — who could, by all rights, have spent his post-government years deploying capital in hedge funds and tech ventures — instead chose the harder road: shuttle diplomacy, sleepless brokering, and the patient cultivation of trust among skeptical leaders. That choice matters. It is the practical morality of sacrifice: choosing service over comfort so others may prosper.Today, the moral urgency is unmistakable. The specter of Hamas — a terrorist organization that has perpetrated unspeakable crimes against Israelis and inflicted devastating harm on Palestinians under its own rule — must be removed from any credible future for Gaza. The secure accord signed under President Trump in Sharm el-Sheikh, already envisioned exactly that: the destruction of terrorist arsenals and the neutralization of political structures that enable violence — preconditions for any sustainable reconstruction and normalcy.I am painfully aware of how fraught this argument sounds. Calls to eliminate a terrorist movement can drift into the language of collective punishment; they can be twisted into justification for dispossession. I reject that. Justice in war must be lawful, proportionate, and human. But there is also realpolitik: the community of states that embraced the Accords must now help close the loop on the security guarantees that made them possible. That means dismantling Hamas’s terrorist capacity and the political apparatus that sustains it — and then ensuring those individuals do not reconstitute a political or military threat to Gaza or to Israel.Israel indisputably has the right to continue the military fight on the ground to eliminate Hamas operatives and dismantle their networks. But war has its limits: how long will this campaign take? How many more months of grinding operations will Israeli soldiers and their nation be asked to endure? How long will the region — and the fragile coalition that the Abraham Accords began to build — tolerate protracted instability?

 I do not know that Jared Kushner himself would have the luxury of endless patience for shuttle diplomacy. For these practical and moral reasons, it is right, however difficult, to pursue parallel tracks: continue necessary military pressure while vigorously negotiating the strict terms of disarmament with the remaining Hamas leadership. I am convinced Jared can help finalize such an agreement — one that secures the surrender of weapons and the dissolution of terrorist command structures, then places those individuals in a third country under international guarantees that they will live as civilians and be expressly prohibited from any political or paramilitary activity. That negotiated, tightly monitored solution offers the quickest, most humane route to disarmament and to opening Gaza to reconstruction that answers to its people, not to terrorists.A successful operation to remove Hamas from Gaza would not be a local victory alone; it would reshape the region’s dynamics. Weakening and neutralizing Hamas would undercut one of Tehran’s most visible tools in the Palestinian arena and would alter the calculations of Hezbollah in Lebanon — a group that has repeatedly stated it will not remain passive while Hamas fights.Such a course is bold, uncomfortable, and precisely the kind of policy that turns accords into institutions. It will require the Netanyahu government and the Arab signatories to the Accords to act in concert — to trust Kushner’s original premise: that mutual interest can tame old enmities. It will require international guarantees, humanitarian oversight, and an economic plan that replaces guns with jobs and tunnels with ports, schools, and factories.We stand at a moral and strategic hinge. We can let the moment pass — returning to the grim symmetry of attacks and reprisals — or we can back the pragmatic, humane yet unflinching strategy someone like Jared Kushner has shown is possible: where courage is paired with a plan for reconstruction, and where political courage is matched by economic vision. The region deserves nothing less.Future generations will judge us not by how loudly we denounced what was wrong, but by how creatively and ruthlessly we stripped power from those who refuse peace and then built structures that made peace permanent. I believe Jared Kushner helped plant the first trees. Let us now help cultivate the orchard.

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