Trump’s Gaza committee teeters as Israel obstructs peace process
The Allenby Bridge crossing in September 2025
The New Arab reports on 22 April 2026:
US efforts to install a post-Hamas administration in Gaza are in danger of unravelling as obstruction by Israel threatens to collapse the nascent Palestinian committee before it even enters the devastated territory.
At least four of the 12 members appointed to the self-styled Board of Peace’s Gaza committee have offered their resignation in protest at Israel’s refusal to allow it to take power in the strip, The National reports, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat acting as the board’s chief representative in Gaza, refused their departure and told them to stay on, the sources said, declining to name the members involved.
The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is composed of independent Palestinian technocrats and civil society leaders and was supposed to take over the day-to-day governance of the territory soon after its formation in January.
But Israeli authorities have blocked them from crossing the border, leaving them stranded in Cairo and unable to replace Hamas as Gaza’s governing authority. “Many of the committee members are losing hope in ever entering Gaza and beginning work,” one of the sources told the Emirati newspaper.
“They, like other Palestinians, feel they’re the legitimate owners of the land of Gaza yet they are treated like no more than employees, without authority or clear brief.”
The committee was set up in January by Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, an organisation created to carry out the US president’s peace plan for Gaza and oversee the territory’s reconstruction. It came several months after the US, together with Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, brokered an indefinite ceasefire that was supposed to see Israel open the Rafah border crossing.
But Israel has continued to enforce heavy border restrictions and block the NCAG from assuming power even after Hamas agreed to step down.