Talks to advance President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza have been on hold since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, Reuters reported on Monday.
The US and Israel launched the war about 10 days after President Trump convened the first meeting of the so-called “Board of Peace,” a body he formed that’s meant to oversee the ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel has constantly violated with daily attacks on Palestinians.
At the “Board of Peace” meeting, Trump said the US and other countries would provide billions of dollars in funds to rebuild Gaza, but no significant developments were announced, as the implementation of his peace plan was already stalled before the Iran war.
Under the US plan, an “International Stabilization Force” is meant to deploy to Gaza to replace IDF troops, who still occupy more than 50% of the Palestinian territory. But the ISF still hasn’t materialized, and Indonesia, the one country that was ready to send troops to Gaza, is saying that it will quit the board if it doesn’t benefit Palestinians.
The other major impediment to implementing the peace plan is the US and Israeli demands for Hamas to fully disarm amid continued Israeli attacks. Hamas’s position is that it won’t lay down its weapons until there are steps toward a Palestinian state, though it has signaled flexibility on the issue, suggesting it could “freeze” or store its weapons under Arab oversight.
A Hamas official confirmed to Reuters that the talks on implementing the peace deal have been frozen. The report also said that the Civil Military Coordination Centre, a US-led military base in southern Israel meant to oversee the Gaza ceasefire, had scaled back to minimal operations over concerns that it could be targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel continued to violate the Gaza ceasefire on Monday, with Gaza’s Health Ministry reporting that IDF attacks killed at least seven Palestinians over the previous 24 hours, bringing the post-ceasefire deal death toll to 648.
