Donald Trump's Board of Peace has received only a tiny fraction of the $17 billion pledged for Gaza, preventing the U.S. president from pushing ahead with his plan for the shattered Palestinian enclave's future, sources told Reuters .
Ten days before U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran plunged the region into war, Trump hosted a conference in Washington that saw Gulf Arab states pledge billions for the governance and reconstruction of Gaza after Israel's genocidal military onslaught in the enclave.
The plan envisages large-scale rebuilding of the coastal enclave after the disarmament of Hamas - whose attacks on Israel triggered the assault on Gaza - and the withdrawal of Israeli troops.
The funding pledges were also meant to pay for the activities of a nascent National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a U.S.-backed group of Palestinian technocrats intended to assume control of Gaza from Hamas.
The Board of Peace denied in a statement on Friday posted on social media after the Reuters story was published that it had funding problems.
"The Board of Peace is a lean, execution-focused organization that calls capital as needed. There are no funding constraints. To date, all funding requests have been met immediately and in full," it said.
Representatives for NCAG did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 'No Money currently available' One of the sources, a person with direct knowledge of the peace board's operations, said that out of ten countries who pledged funds, only three - the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and the U.S. itself - had contributed funding.
The source said funding so far was under $1 billion, but did not give more details. The Iran war "has affected everything," exacerbating previous funding difficulties, the source said.
NCAG could not enter Gaza due to both funding and security issues, the source added. The second source, a Palestinian official familiar with the matter, said the board informed Hamas and other Palestinian factions that NCAG is unable to enter Gaza right now due to a lack of funding.
"No money is currently available," the official cited board envoy Nickolay Mladenovas as informing Palestinian groups.
Reports have also indicated that Israel is blocking the entry of NCAG officials to Gaza.
Hamas has repeatedly said it is ready to hand over governance to NCAG, led by Ali Shaath, a former deputy minister with the Palestinian Authority, which currently exercises limited self-rule in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Shaath's committee is meant to assume control of Gaza's ministries and run its police force.
He and his 14 committee members have been cloistered in a hotel in Cairo under supervision by American and Egyptian handlers, said a diplomatic source.
Rehabilitation of Gaza, where four-fifths of buildings were destroyed in two years of Israeli bombardments, has been projected by global institutions to cost around $70 billion.
The stuttering plan for Gaza's future echoes other ambitious initiatives by Trump, who has sought to project himself as the world's peacemaker but has struggled to end the Ukraine war as he said he would and is seeing this week's truce with Iran come under immediate severe strain. Disarmament talks Egypt, which has been hosting the talks, invited Hamas for more meetings on Saturday, according to a source in the militant group.
The ceasefire halted full-blown war but left Israeli troops in control of a depopulated zone comprising well over half of Gaza, with Hamas in power in a narrow coastal strip. Israel has also killed more than 700 Palestinians in Gaza since the October ceasefire came into force.
Trump's board has been leading negotiations with Hamas and other Palestinian factions on disarmament. Israel says Hamas must lay down arms before it pulls troops out of Gaza, Hamas says it will not comply without guarantees of Israel's withdrawal and a halt to firing in Gaza.
The diplomatic source familiar with the disarmament talks said they remained in deadlock and feared Israel was looking for an excuse to relaunch a full-scale offensive on Gaza.
Israeli military officials have said they are preparing for a swift return to full-scale war if Hamas does not lay down its weapons.
Israel has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023, most of them civilians, according to Gazan health authorities, and has spread famine and displaced most of the territory's population. (Reuters)