The U.S.-led Board of Peace tasked with overseeing the postwar management of Gaza does not intend to hold Israel to the terms of the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire if Hamas does not accept the international panel’s framework for the terror group’s disarmament, The Times of Israel reported.
While the Board of Peace’s High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov has warned that refusal from Hamas to disarm could lead to the resumption of the war, he goes much further in the document, saying that Israel will not be expected to halt attacks in Gaza or ensure humanitarian aid enters the Strip.
The Board of Peace has been engaged in negotiations with Hamas for several months, conditioning major reconstruction projects for the war-flattened Gaza on the decommissioning of the group’s weapons.
Hamas has refused to comply, arguing that Israel must first adhere to the terms of the ceasefire’s first phase, which included a hostage-prisoner exchange along with the scale-up of humanitarian aid into the Strip and the partial withdrawal of Israeli forces.
In an apparent effort to meet Hamas halfway, Mladenov and Lighstone state in the letter that they approached Israel in early April to secure guarantees that it would fully implement U.S. President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan for ending the war.
While the Board of Peace has preferred using the 20-point plan as the foundation of its work, the ceasefire document that Israel and Hamas actually signed last year only focused on the first phase.
Hamas has argued that progressing to the second phase’s defining issue of disarmament cannot take place before phase one is fully implemented.
The pair appeared to be referencing the April 11 deadline they had given Hamas to accept the framework for the gradual handover of all weapons over an eight-month period as a basis for negotiations.
With Hamas pushing back on the effort, the Board of Peace envoys decided to swallow their deadline, rather than blow up the talks completely.
