Turkey, Egypt and Qatar issued a joint statement Wednesday condemning intensified Israeli military strikes in southern Gaza, warning that the attacks threaten to unravel a ceasefire process that both sides had, only weeks earlier, described as nearing a durable peace.
That the mediators' language has hardened from "far from perfect" to "undermines efforts at a critical juncture" over the space of a few months is itself a measure of how much ground has been lost since the spring.
Netanyahu had already called an earlier version of the disarmament roadmap "unacceptable" when Kushner presented it in Israel on August 17, and the strikes since then read less like a departure from that position than a continuation of it by other means.
The trip produced meetings but no announced concessions from either side, and no new session has been scheduled since it concluded.
Whether that bet pays off depends on whether this week's strikes are a temporary setback or the start of a slide back toward open conflict.
Turkey, Egypt and Qatar say intensified Israeli strikes that killed at least 16 Palestinians since Tuesday threaten to unravel the Gaza ceasefire, days after a Kushner-led delegation left the region without narrowing the standoff over Hamas disarmament.