Please excuse me for writing about a mysterious meeting in Washington a week after it was held, which was on 27 August. It is already notoriously difficult to keep secrets in the US capital, and that meeting was chaired by President Donald Trump who is notorious for letting cats out of the bag. It was attended by figures directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, specifically, the fifth Gaza war. So readers may already know what transpired, despite the cloak of secrecy.
I also apologise for venturing to discuss such a complex subject in this small space. To add to the complexity, although that gathering was formally presided over by Trump, in practice it was run by Steve Witkoff, the White House’s envoy for several, globally pivotal conflicts. Also present was Jared Kushner, who had entered the White House in his capacity as Trump’s son-in-law. Both Kushner and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka were among the family advisers surrounding Trump in his first presidential term. Former British prime minister Tony Blair also attended the meeting in his capacity as head of the “Quartet” (the US, Russia, the UN, and the EU) established in 2002 to promote peace in the Middle East. As is often the case with such formations, the Quartet has managed to last for 23 years without achieving peace or preventing recurring wars.
The lead-up to the meeting was typical of Trump’s sensationalism. It coincided with another Israeli offensive against Gaza, starting with the mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza City to the central and southern parts of the Strip. Meanwhile, the UN-supported IPC officially declared widespread famine, which has long accompanied Israel’s campaign of ethnic cleansing. Despite the persistent bloodshed and starvation, Trump declared he would bring the war to an end within two weeks. To describe this declaration as overly optimistic would be an understatement given how it jars with brutal realities on the ground. This applies not just to Gaza but also to the West Bank, where Israel has launched a major offensive against Ramallah and Nablus. The assault, against the backdrop of expanding settlement activity, strongly hints at Israel’s determination to further partition the West Bank.
Trump’s remarks may have inspired hope, but that soon evaporated when Witkoff revised the timeline of expectations, saying that the war — or more precisely, a ceasefire — might have to wait until the end of the year. Nevertheless, when it comes to a conflict that has raged for eight decades, a few months’ wait need not induce despair. Witkoff’s assessment was more realistic, so by the following morning Trump’s words had joined the long list of electoral campaign promises, which proved hollow, like his claim to end the war in Ukraine within a day or two after taking office.
The essential difference between Trump’s position and Witkoff’s lies in their respective roles. Trump is the man of grand ideas: ending wars through a major one-off peace deal made possible by incentives offered by the US alone or in conjunction with its allies. Witkoff, who was suddenly thrust into the crucible of multiple hotspots, focuses on smaller gains: a truce, a hostage-prisoner exchange, delivering some sustenance to the hungry in Gaza. His task is to ease suffering and to broker short-term agreements — sixty days, perhaps — to allow time for reflection and preparation for another negotiating round at a higher level. His thinking echoes the step-by-step approach that Henry Kissinger brought to conflict resolution in the 1970s.
The last-minute guests before the secretive meeting hailed from two perspectives. The first — a broader one — was represented by Tony Blair and his revived task of voicing the concerns of international parties from Washington and Moscow to the UN and the Middle East with its Arabs, Jews, and others. His probable contribution to any new initiative coming out of Washington would be to underscore the obstacles that continue to stand in the way of peace, unless the US exerts overwhelming pressure on Israel and the Arabs muster the courage to remove Hamas from every aspect of Palestinian life.
The second, narrower perspective dates back to Trump’s first term and is rooted in the view that the essence of the conflict is economic. At the time, it was represented by Jared Kushner who organised the Manama “Peace to Prosperity” conference, which saw economic cooperation as a pathway to peace, stability, and prosperity. His effort later evolved into the Abraham Accords. More recently, Kushner gave Trump the idea of a Gaza “Riviera”, a vision for the Strip in the post-displacement era, though one doubts the remnants of the ethnic cleansing could ever live in the touted luxury. Kushner also founded a billion dollar company tasked with studying how to persuade Middle Eastern parties to embrace economic peace.
What might a meeting that brings together these two perspectives yield?
* A version of this article appears in print in the 4 September, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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