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Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, said in a remote address to the YES Annual Meeting security conference in Ukraine that the Trump administration deliberately exploited Israel's "global isolation" following its September 9, 2025 airstrike on Hamas leaders in Doha to press Israel into accepting the Gaza hostage-and-ceasefire agreement. Kushner called the Doha operation a "terrible" and militarily unsuccessful action; the strike killed a Qatari security officer and several lower-ranking Hamas members while the targeted senior leaders survived, and it triggered a regional diplomatic crisis that briefly suspended Qatar's mediation role. The remarks, reported over the weekend of September 12-13, 2026, offered an unusually candid American account of how Washington pressured its closest Middle East ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party issued a Hebrew-language statement rejecting Kushner's framing, insisting the decision to send the IDF into Gaza City and to strike Hamas's leadership in Qatar, combined with Trump's pressure, is what forced Hamas to drop its demands and release the remaining hostages. The October 2025 agreement that followed led to the release of 48 hostages, living and deceased, and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, though implementation has since stalled over demands that Hamas disarm. The exchange mattered because it went to the heart of Netanyahu's central campaign claim ahead of Israel's October 27 election that military pressure, not international isolation, produced the deal.