Revised plan aims to ‘keep something going’ amid fears Netanyahu may gamble on new all-out offensive before Israeli elections
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The Gaza recovery plan being pursued by Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) has shrunk dramatically from an ambitious blueprint for the reconstruction of the whole territory to a small pilot project in the south of the strip.
Even the envisaged pilot scheme – involving a temporary camp for a tiny fraction of Gaza’s 2 million displaced people, with a Palestinian administration, police and a small international security force – is not expected to take shape before the end of the year.
Incremental steps have been announced in recent weeks. A few Moroccan and Kosovan officers have arrived in Israel where they are intended to be the kernel of an International Stabilization Force (ISF), tasked with protecting the pilot camp. A logistical base for this future force to store vehicles, equipment and other material is nearing completion at the Kerem Shalom crossing between Israel and Gaza.
However, preparatory work on the pilot camp near the southern Gaza of city of Rafah has not begun, nor has construction of the camp’s ISF support base. Satellite images of the area show disturbed earth but no new structures. Substantial progress is not expected before Israel holds elections on 27 October, which could bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition government.
Israel has routinely violated the Trump-brokered ceasefire since it was declared last October, blocked any reconstruction work and severely limited flows of humanitarian aid into Gaza. Western diplomats in Jerusalem believe the best hope of progress in Gaza is a new Israeli government, but it is far from clear whether any successor coalition would be substantially more flexible.
One diplomat in Jerusalem argued that the BoP had no choice but to make the most of very limited progress, as an admission of failure would open the way for extreme factions in the Israeli government with radically different plans for Gaza.
“The aim is just to keep something going, keep the ball in play, because if you stop there are others with a more extreme agenda just waiting to jump in and take over, and they are talking about wholesale population transfer and colonisation,” the diplomat said.
There is growing apprehension that Netanyahu, facing the threat of electoral defeat, will gamble on a new all-out offensive in Gaza before the October vote.
Israel has carried out frequent strikes on Gaza killing more than 1,100 Palestinians since the October ceasefire and Israeli forces have repeatedly moved forward from the ceasefire line agreed in October which split the strip roughly evenly between Israeli- and Hamas-controlled sections. The Israeli army now directly occupies more than 60% of the territory and has created a buffer zone beyond that.
A return to full-scale war would probably sweep away even the BoP’s modest pilot plan.
Israeli officials have repeatedly suggested that a return to war is inevitable on the grounds that Hamas has refused to disarm. Hamas has said it would be willing to lay down its weapons under certain conditions and took part in negotiations in Cairo over the weekend on possible disarmament mechanisms.
The Cairo talks with the BoP covered the disarmament of Hamas and rival Israeli-backed militias inside Gaza, who would receive the surrendered weapons, how they would be stored and whether assault rifles would count as offensive weapons or personal arms.
However, reports from the Egyptian capital suggested progress on decommissioning weapons was unlikely while Israel continued to carry out airstrikes and creep ever further into Hamas-held territory.
“As long as Israel doesn’t commit to a gradual withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and to changing the reality there, there’s no basis for talks,” a Palestinian source told Haaretz.
The high representative for Gaza appointed by the BoP, Nickolay Mladenov, was widely criticised for echoing Israeli talking points in a May report to the UN security council, when he blamed Hamas for the stalled peace process with no direct mention of Israeli violations.
The limited pressure put on Israel has been more discreet. Aryeh Lightstone, the Trump administration’s lead negotiator in Israel who also serves as a BoP adviser, wrote to the Netanyahu government privately in June, calling for a relaxation of restrictions on “dual-use” humanitarian aid entering Gaza, which have stopped the shipment of essential items such as water pipes and solar panels.
Lightstone’s letter – first reported by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and confirmed by an official with knowledge of its contents – also asked for the coalition’s clearance for the eventual entry into Gaza of the ISF and a vetted Palestinian police force. The Israeli government has so far not approved any of the requests, according to the official.
The pilot programme near Rafah is a far cry from the initial aspirations of the BoP. Launching that scheme with a wildly optimistic slideshow in January, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner promised that the gates to aid would be thrown open and basic infrastructure – including water, sewage and electric systems, hospitals and bakeries – would be restored across the strip within 100 days.
After five months of deadlock, the far less ambitious pilot plan was hammered out two weeks ago at meetings in Cyprus attended by Mladenov, Lightstone, advisers from the Tony Blair Institute and members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).
The NCAG, a body of 13 Palestinian professionals and technocrats, has been barred from entering Gaza by Israel, and has been based in Cairo since being convened by the BoP early in the year.
The pilot camp envisaged in the current blueprint would consist of portable cabins for tens of thousands of displaced people in Gaza and would be set up in the buffer zone along the ceasefire line near Rafah.
Israeli troops would withdraw from the line and security at the crossing between Hamas-run Gaza and the camp would be overseen by the ISF and a specially trained Palestinian police force, officially vetted by NCAG and the ISF – though in reality Israel is expected to have a decisive say in who is recruited.
The training of that force in Egypt has not begun and is expected to take several months. It is hoped that the ISF will be about 5,000-strong – a quarter of the force originally anticipated – with troops from Morocco, Kosovo, and possibly Albania and Kazakhstan. They will also take months to train and the legal framework for their presence is still being negotiated with the Israeli government.
“I think you’re looking at late 2026. If we got this done, in place, by December, I’d be very happy,” an official familiar with the planning said.
Preference for settlement in the pilot camp would be given to former residents of the Rafah area, but it is not clear what other criteria would be used in vetting Palestinians wanting to move there. The whole scheme has been denounced by critics, including the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, as a “concentration camp” in the making, but BoP officials insist there will be freedom of movement in and out of the pilot area.
A wider range of humanitarian relief items would be let into the pilot camp, but even there, the Israeli government has insisted on a distinction between humanitarian aid and reconstruction, with only the former being permitted.
It is unclear where the funds for the pilot would come from. Very little of the $17bn (£12.6bn) originally pledged for Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza has actually materialised. The EU’s Palestine Donor Group announced on Monday that it had raised €883m (£770m) for Gaza. The money is intended for the restoration of basic water and sanitation infrastructure and waste management, and is meant to be complementary to the BoP’s projects.
The BoP is negotiating for some of the $11bn in Palestinian tax revenue and frozen bank assets seized and withheld by Israel to be diverted to project funds.
“We’re working on that. It’s under discussion,” a source familiar with the negotiations said. The suggestion has led to outrage from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, which has been financially suffocated.
“These are not Israeli funds to withhold or bargain with,” the PA foreign minister, Varsen Aghabekian, said. “These funds must be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Aghabekian said that the switch of focus from a whole-of-Gaza approach to a small pilot project presented a dilemma for Palestinians.
“The humanitarian catastrophe cannot be managed through fragmented or partial measures. At the same time, every effort that genuinely saves Palestinian lives deserves careful consideration,” said Aghabekian. “Our concern, however, is that temporary arrangements must never become a substitute for a comprehensive solution or serve to normalise an unacceptable reality.”
According to an official familiar with the Cyprus talks, the NCAG was split over whether to go along with the Rafah pilot scheme, fearing it would prove divisive within Gaza’s 2.1 million Palestinian population, and put the vast majority on a lower priority second tier in the provision of humanitarian relief.
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