The United States' launch of a so‑called Gaza "peace committee" — signed at Davos under the personal chairmanship of President Donald Trump and accompanied by a controversial offer of $1 billion for permanent seats — has provoked an unusually public rupture with Israel and left the prospects for Gaza's recovery in doubt.
Jerusalem issued a blunt rebuke after Washington published the executive committee list for Gaza's post‑conflict governance without prior coordination, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dispatch his foreign minister to raise the matter with U.S. Secretary of State Rubio. Israel's complaint was not merely procedural: the roster includes senior officials from Turkey and Qatar, two actors Israel views as hostile or compromised, while Israel itself finds no representative on the panel.
The inclusion of Ankara and Doha is politically combustible. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly excoriated Netanyahu, and Qatar's role is complicated by a 2025 Israeli strike on Doha that killed a Qatari security official and interrupted ceasefire talks — an episode that required a formal Israeli apology brokered by the White House. From Israel's perspective, putting critics or prior adversaries in a supervisory role over Gaza reconstruction is tantamount to ceding decisive influence over security and governance.
Domestic Israeli politics have hardened the response. National Security Minister Itamar Ben‑Gvir publicly backed Netanyahu's stance, declaring that Gaza needs no external administrative commission to oversee reconstruction. A rare cabinet consensus against Washington's unilateral design signals that Jerusalem views the U.S. initiative as crossing key national red lines on security and sovereignty.
Washington's design is also institutionally messy. Parallel to the U.S. initiative, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey have proclaimed a 15‑member Palestinian technocratic committee to run Gaza's day‑to‑day affairs, nominally independent but subject to Israeli Shin Bet security vetting and to be overseen by the U.S. peace committee. Multiple, overlapping authorities — each carrying different external patrons and security conditions — undermine the new governance architecture's legitimacy in Gaza and its ability to function effectively.
A core policy disagreement concerns what "demilitarization" actually means. U.S. officials define it largely in terms of destroying heavy weapons such as rockets and launchers. Israel insists that even light small arms — AK‑47s and similar weapons — must be outlawed. What looks like a technical argument masks a deeper strategic fear in Jerusalem: any retention of weapons at the grassroots level could allow militant structures to reconstitute rapidly.
Trump's motives are plainly political. U.S. media have framed the initiative as a signature foreign‑policy achievement for the president's second term, and the hastily assembled multi‑party framework helps present forward motion. That urgency, however, collides with Israel's insistence on definitive security outcomes and with Palestinian skepticism about externally imposed technocratic rule.
The humanitarian and reconstruction context is dire. Gaza remains devastated: the UN and Gaza authorities record thousands of civilians killed and injured since the October ceasefire, most infrastructure destroyed, and humanitarian access well below pre‑conflict levels. Aid convoys and fuel deliveries have been constrained, and international estimates put reconstruction needs in the tens of billions of dollars — funding that will be hard to mobilize while key local stakeholders reject the proposed governance terms.
With Israel unwilling to permit meaningful reconstruction until Hamas is disarmed and with Hamas showing no sign of relinquishing weapons, the second phase of the ceasefire is fragile. Washington's attempt to package a governance solution as a political win may have momentarily advanced a framework, but it has also exposed strategic faultlines between the United States and its closest regional partner. The result is a highly uncertain path for Gaza's recovery in which the humanitarian urgency of rebuilding collides with intractable security and legitimacy dilemmas.