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Empty fund, stalled reconstruction
U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” for Gaza is facing a funding crisis after the Financial Times reported that “Zero dollars have been deposited” into the board’s financial fund, even as the board received donations directly into its JP Morgan bank account.
“As the American president, Donald Trump, inaugurates his Peace Council, Israel still bars entry into the enclave of Palestinian technocrats from the Gaza National Administration Committee (CNAG), the executive expected to succeed the Islamist Palestinian Hamas government”
At the board’s inaugural meeting in February, member states pledged $7 billion for the Board of Peace’s relief and reconstruction package for Gaza, and Trump promised an additional $10 billion, but multiple outlets say the World Bank-administered fund has received no donor money four months after its creation.
Truthout says the board’s funding has helped cover the position of Nickolay Mladenov, the “director-general” of the Board of Peace, and salaries for Palestinian technocrats selected by the board to govern Gaza, while a separate UAE contribution of $100 million to train a new police force in Gaza is frozen and the program has not started.
Middle East Monitor and i24NEWS both frame the situation as a deepening crisis in which the board’s World Bank account remains empty while contributions are routed through a less-transparent JPMorgan account, leaving the effort tangled in legal and political uncertainty that has stalled rebuilding plans.
Competing explanations and quotes
As the funding shortfall persists, a Board of Peace official told the Financial Times that “a number of options were established to receive funding” and that “at this point, contributors have opted to use other options.”
The board’s spokesperson and other reporting describe a JPMorgan account that, unlike the World Bank mechanism, has no independent transparency obligations, a setup that i24NEWS says has left the board tangled in legal and political uncertainty.
In Congress, a senior congressional aide told the Financial Times that “there’s no intent” for the money to be managed by the board, while Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the board as having legal jurisdiction similar to a UN agency and called it “a creature of the UN to contemplate reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in Gaza.”
The dispute over what the board is and how it will operate also shows up in the board’s own messaging to the press, with the Jerusalem Post reporting the BoP responded to the Financial Times by saying, “This FT article tries desperately to sow doubt about the commitment of the US and partners to the Board of Peace.”
What’s at stake next
With reconstruction work stalled, multiple reports say the board has begun tendering for security and reconstruction work but has signed no contracts, and the board’s spokesperson attributed the delay to the fact that it is “because we’re not operating in Gaza yet” because Hamas has not been disarmed.
“'New Gaza', a tourist zone, murky funding”
The legal and operational uncertainty is also tied to the board’s planned role inside Gaza, where a UN Security Council resolution described the board as a “transitional administration,” raising the question posed to the Financial Times: “What happens when this expires?”
Middle East Eye adds that the board has received some small contributions to cover salaries for workers, including Morocco’s $3m and the UAE’s $20m to establish the office of Nickolay Mladenov and Palestinian technocrats, but it says the board has yet to start any work in Gaza because of a “lack of any funding to enable them to execute anything on the ground.”
Across the reporting, the stakes are framed as whether promised financing and governance mechanisms can actually reach Gaza, with the board’s own spokesperson saying there was no system in place “to handle the flow of services and goods that are imagined as part of the plan,” while the EU, UN, and World Bank assessment cited by i24NEWS estimates Gaza’s reconstruction needs at more than $70 billion over the coming decade.
