Board of Peace envoy: Gaza mediators have ‘framework’ to rebuild, but Hamas must disarm

Nickolay Mladenov, the former UN diplomat charged with implementing US President Donald Trump’s plan for a postwar Gaza Strip, said on Thursday that the ceasefire’s mediating countries have agreed on a “framework” to see Gaza rebuilt, but that Hamas must be disarmed.

Mladenov wrote on X that the US, Qatar, and Egypt have all agreed on a “framework” that “can unlock reconstruction, breathe life into communities, and bring closer to unity and a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian question. It is now on the table.”

He said, however, that executing on the framework “requires one clear choice: full decommissioning by Hamas and every armed group, with no exceptions and no carve-outs.”

A senior US official told NPR that the mediators gave Hamas –  which remains the de facto government of roughly half the Strip, even after two years of war sparked by the terror group’s October 7 onslaught – a formal proposal to this effect in Cairo last week.

The terror group was asked to provide its response to the proposal in about a week, the report said.

However, a Hamas official told the US public broadcaster that the group would wait to see the outcome of the ongoing US-Israeli war against the Iranian regime, which has been a major backer of the terror group and its allies, before responding.

A report earlier this month said negotiations around disarmament, amnesty, and other issues had been put on hold with the outbreak of the war.

The optimism expressed by Mladenov – whose formal title on Trump’s Board of Peace is high representative for Gaza – came despite Hamas’s security forces stepping up their control of the territory in recent weeks.

The October 2025 ceasefire deal mostly ended two years of fighting triggered by Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, and the first phase secured the release of all remaining hostages taken by the terror group, in exchange for Israel’s release of thousands of Palestinian security prisoners and detainees.

Gazans who spoke with The Times of Israel in recent days testified to the terror regime’s increased presence in the Strip in recent weeks, enforcing price controls, managing the distribution of goods arriving from outside the Strip, and seeming to intimidate some residents who’d previously spoken to international media by name, but now insist upon anonymity.

Under the ceasefire, Hamas’s civil governance of Gaza is supposed to be replaced by a committee of Palestinian technocrats operating under Trump’s Board of Peace.

However, the members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) have yet to enter the Strip, holding fort in Cairo since being formed and refraining from returning to the enclave until better conditions are in place for them to govern.

Under the Trump plan, the NGAG would be supported by a temporary International Stabilization Force that would work alongside a “newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force.”

The technocratic body announced last month that it was opening applications for “qualified candidates” seeking to serve in a “transitional police force” to be deployed in the Strip, but no such force has been set up as yet.

Nurit Yohanan contributed to this report.