Gaza 'board of peace' will hold first meeting at Davos, Palestinian-American intermediary says
The US plans to announce its Gaza "board of peace" next week and hold its first meeting on the sidelines of the Davos Economic Forum, according to a Palestinian-American mediator close to the Trump administration.
“The Gaza Peace Council is expected to announce within the next week its first official meeting on the sidelines of the Davos meetings in the third week of this month,” Bishara Bahbah wrote on Facebook on Friday.
Bahbah served as an intermediary between Hamas and the Trump administration before a ceasefire was signed in October.
Bahbah, who previously led "Arab Americans for Trump", was instrumental in building support for the US president ahead of the 2024 election.
Hamas contacted Bahbah as a backchannel to the White House in spring 2025. Bahbah helped arrange the release of US-Israeli citizen Edan Alexander from captivity in May.
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His statement comes amid signs of some progress on Trump’s stalled Gaza peace board.
Meetings
Last week, Nickolay Mladenov met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh.
A former Bulgarian diplomat who served as the United Nations envoy for Middle East peace, Mladenov has been tapped as the peace board's executive. After leaving the UN, he moved to the UAE, where he has been teaching at their diplomatic academy.
Trump plans to serve as head of the board alongside other world leaders. The board will interact with a committee of Palestinian technocrats in Gaza through Mladenov.
Bahbah said that the “main entities” responsible for “managing” Gaza’s reconstruction will be established within 30 days. He added that Palestinian factions are expected to meet in Cairo next week, where the names of an independent technocratic committee to manage Gaza’s affairs will be announced.
A ceasefire was announced in Gaza in October, but the agreement has been riddled with Israeli violations. At least 418 Palestinians have been killed by Israel in hundreds of attacks, according to Gaza’s government media office.
In December, Trump said he was weighing whether an Israeli assassination of a senior Hamas official violated the ceasefire, but public attention on Gaza has shifted to the recent US attack on Venezuela, fighting in Yemen and protests in Iran.
Ceasefire violations, blocking aid
The UN Security Council approved a mandate for an international stabilisation force to deploy to Gaza in November, but the Arab and Muslim countries expected to contribute to the force are afraid to be caught between Hamas, which has not disarmed, and the Israeli military, which occupies roughly half of Gaza.
In January, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said his country would not send troops to the enclave. Baku is a key ally of Turkey but also enjoys close ties with Israel - its involvement in the force could have been pivotal.
Besides launching strikes, Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement by choking aid into the enclave amid freezing winter temperatures.
Bahbah said that Israel is working to withdraw recognition from “most international institutions providing aid to the Gaza Strip”, on the grounds they are “hostile to Israel". He said in the future that aid will be distributed “through machines supervised by private companies owned by people”, without identifying who.
But the ceasefire agreement the US guaranteed alongside Qatar and Egypt was based on a 20-point proposal introduced by Trump which included a pledge that aid would enter Gaza “without interference” through the UN and its agencies.
The agreement also called on Israel to allow the flow of aid through the Rafah border crossing, which has not happened.
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