A committee that was supposed to represent the future of Gaza’s governance is stuck in Egypt, unable to cross the border. That limbo encapsulates the fundamental challenge facing Donald Trump’s Board of Peace as it held its inaugural meeting in Washington Thursday: the structures needed to implement the ceasefire agreement are in place on paper but paralyzed in practice.
The US-named 15-member transitional committee, led by former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath and overseen by former UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, was designed to take over from Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza. But it has not received Israeli permission to enter Gaza from Egypt. Israel has not commented on why.
Mladenov was direct about the consequences at the Munich Security Conference last week. The committee cannot work unless Hamas hands over power and ceasefire violations stop. Without those conditions being met, the committee is being embarrassed and rendered ineffective before it can begin its work. “All of this needs to move very fast,” he said.
The Board of Peace, which brings together more than two dozen founding member nations, was partly designed to create the political conditions that would allow this committee to function. Trump has claimed $5 billion in reconstruction pledges and thousands of peacekeeping personnel commitments from member countries — though neither has been documented publicly.
The transitional committee’s limbo is not merely a procedural delay. It is a symptom of the deeper stalemate between a Hamas that has not disarmed, an Israel that will not allow reconstruction without full disarmament, and a US-led framework that has named a governing body without yet securing the conditions for it to govern.