Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme

Palestinians who were given limited aid carry the food products they received to their tents in Gaza City in September last year. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Palestinians who were given limited aid carry the food products they received to their tents in Gaza City in September last year. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images Trump’s Board of Peace drops full Gaza recovery plan in favour of tiny pilot scheme Revised plan aims to ‘keep something going’ amid fears Netanyahu may gamble on new all-out offensive before Israeli elections 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. View image in fullscreen A reconstruction plan for ‘New Gaza’ put together by the Board of Peace. Illustration: Board of Peace Incremental steps have been announced in recent weeks. A few Moroccan and Kosovar 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. View image in fullscreen The aftermath of Israel’s air and ground offensive in Rafah, Gaza photographed in January 2025. Photograph: Jehad Alshrafi/AP 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 sai