One of the less glamorous but most consequential challenges facing Trump’s Board of Peace is deceptively simple: who will actually govern Gaza after Hamas? The answer, in theory, is a US-named transitional committee of 15 politically independent Palestinian administrators. In practice, making that transition happen is proving extraordinarily difficult.
The committee, led by former Palestinian Authority deputy minister Ali Shaath and overseen by former UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov, was constituted with American backing and a clear mandate. But it has not received Israeli permission to enter Gaza from Egypt. It cannot begin its work without Hamas handing over power. And Hamas has shown no inclination to hand over power.
Mladenov laid out the problem plainly at the Munich Security Conference: the committee cannot work under current conditions. Without Hamas transferring authority and ceasefire violations stopping, the committee is being embarrassed and rendered ineffective. “All of this needs to move very fast,” he said.
The governance vacuum is not merely a political inconvenience — it has immediate humanitarian consequences. Without a legitimate, functioning governing authority, aid distribution is harder to coordinate, security is harder to maintain, and the conditions necessary for reconstruction cannot be established. The board’s $5 billion in claimed pledges — unverified — and its broader $70 billion reconstruction vision depend on governance structures that do not yet exist.
Trump’s board must find a way to create the political conditions for the governance transition — pressing Hamas to transfer power, persuading Israel to grant permission for the committee to enter, and ensuring that the committee itself has the resources and authority to function when it does. None of these steps are simple, and none can be accomplished without the active cooperation of parties that currently have little incentive to provide it.