President Trump’s top Middle East peace envoys categorically rejected accusations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in an interview with CBS’s “60 minutes” broadcast on Sunday.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and who is serving as a special advisor on the Middle East, said that despite their first-hand accounts of viewing mass devastation in Gaza, they saw no justification for the term of genocide.
“Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide?” Leslie Stahl asked the two advisors on the CBS program.
“No. No,” Kushner responded.
“Absolutely not,” Witkoff added. “No, no, there was a war being fought.”
Kushner and Witkoff last visited Gaza on Oct. 11, shortly before a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas. The two envoys traveled into the strip under Israeli military protection, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Trump administration has set up a civil-military coordination center to support postconflict stabilization.
Israel’s war against Hamas, launched in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack, has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, according to Gazan health officials. At least half of that number is reportedly women and children, but it also includes Hamas fighters.
A United Nations commission concluded in a report published last month that Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In August, the International Association of Genocide Scholars declared in a statement that Israel’s policies and actions met the legal definition of genocide.
South Africa is pursuing a case at the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s top court, charging Israel with carrying out genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and many of Israel’s supporters, have vehemently denied the accusations.
Netanyahu, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in September, defended Israel’s actions as battling an enemy that operates among civilians, and which obstructs delivery of humanitarian assistance facilitated by Israel.
Kushner and Witkoff arrived in Israel Monday morning, a U.S. Embassy spokesperson told NewsNation, The Hill’s partner news network.
Their visit comes as Israel has accused Hamas of violating the ceasefire by attacking Israeli troops in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Israel launched a wave of strikes on Gaza in retaliation over the weekend, but both sides have since recommitted to the ceasefire.
Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, said the ceasefire is “still in place,” adding that Hamas has been “quite rambunctious.”
