As Jillian Segal denied the undeniable at the Bondi Royal Commission this week, not much is changing in Gaza, and Trump’s Board of Peace stands by idly. Cathy Peters with the latest.
In a move that’s been largely unreported here, Hamas announced earlier this week that it would dissolve its governing Emergency Committee with the resignation of its acting leader.
This move has been recognised as an attempt to hasten the transfer of administrative authority to the Trump-appointed Board of Peace’s National Committee for the Management of Gaza (NCAG), a body of Palestinian technocrats, assembled and waiting in Cairo to manage public administration, security, recovery and transition throughout the Gaza Strip as part of the agreed ceasefire plan.
However, despite being established in January this year, the NCAG has not yet been given access to enter Gaza by the Board of Peace or Israel.
Trump’s controversial Board of Peace predictably dismissed Hamas’ move, stating that the NCAG is not yet in a position to take on this role while Hamas retains control of weapons. Hamas maintains that while Israel is still killing Palestinians, it will not disarm.
Nine months since the Gaza ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan of October 2025, conditions throughout the Strip have remained unlivable and deadly for Palestinians, with more than 1000 killed by Israeli forces and more than 3,500 injured.
Parents stay awake all night in their tents to stop rats feeding on their children.
The amount of humanitarian aid is far short of what is required, and there is a trickle of medical evacuations despite some 16,500 Palestinians needing urgent medical transfer out of Gaza.
A Board of inaction
The UN Security Council supported the establishment of the Board of Peace in November last year, noting that it would be temporary and transitional, although Trump subsequently declared it would address other world conflicts beyond Gaza.
The composition of the Board of Peace Executive and the Gaza Executive Board includes a number of Trump’s leadership team, plus other Republican operatives, wealthy U.S.businessmen and real estate magnates, as well as Tony Blair.
- Donald Trump – Chairman for life
- Marco Rubio – U.S. Secretary of State
- Jared Kushner – U.S. presidential advisor and son-in-law
- Steve Witkoff – U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East
- Tony Blair – Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- Marc Rowan – CEO of Apollo Global Management
- Ajay Banga – President of the World Bank Group
The Gaza Executive Board includes all of the above plus various international diplomats and intelligence officials and representatives from Egypt, Turkey, Qatar and the UAE and more Republican government appointees. Susie Wiles, U.S. Trump campaign advisor, and Robert Gabriel, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor.
According to the UN Security Council Resolution 2803, this body has UN support to ‘set the framework and coordinate funding for the redevelopment of Gaza’ until the Palestinian Authority has ‘satisfactorily reformed’. It also authorised the Board to deploy a temporary International Stabilisation Force in Gaza; however, this has not occurred.
Israel has moved some of the anti-Hamas Palestinian militias it’s been arming and funding for three years now into the area it has occupied behind the yellow line. These various militias, led by factional gangs, drug lords and criminals, pose additional threats to Hamas disarming and the transition of power to a Palestinian-led reconstruction committee and the ultimate withdrawal of the IDF.
Yellow and orange lines
Source: Gisha.
The Israeli-defined ‘yellow line ’, according to Israel’s legal NGO Gisha, pushes more than two million people into less than half of the Strip’s territory, exacerbating unbearable overcrowding that is harming public health, including outbreaks of disease and infestation of rats and other pests.
Israel’s seizure of such vast areas also prevents Gaza residents from returning to their homes and lands. Most of Gaza’s agricultural lands lie east of the Yellow Line, meaning they are within areas controlled by Israel. Continued denial of access for farmers to their lands prevents the rehabilitation of vital food sources.
From March 2025, Israel instituted the ‘orange’ line, a line that delineates almost 48% of Gaza’s land mass where any international organisations are prohibited from moving with prior coordination with Israeli authorities. Gisha reports that this orange line is now a new border that has expanded the area that Israel now directly controls.
While negotiations have stalled for 9 months on the initial implementation of the ceasefire agreement, the IDF, following on from Netanyahu’s call in May, has now occupied almost 70% of Gaza, with the yellow cement perimeter markers defining an ever-shrinking area where 2.1 million war-wounded and dispossessed Palestinians are helplessly surviving.
Remote-controlled machine guns
Everyone in Gaza is constantly monitored by drones, and now occupying the eastern perimeter of this dystopian landscape are 23 massive military cranes equipped with remote-controlled machine guns and high-tech surveillance cameras inside the Israeli IDF-defined yellow line. Gaza journalist Tamar Nahed posted this description of Israel’s latest killing apparatus,
These cranes have turned the entire city into an open field. The latest military technologies are directed at civilians. We have become an open testing ground for their new weapons. The horror is not just in the sound… it is the constant feeling of being an exposed target at all times.
In the first week of July, the Board of Peace declared that there was no role for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Gaza, which is a continuation of the Israeli ban on this aid organisation, which has supported Palestinians with essential humanitarian and educational aid in Gaza since 1948.
This announcement negates the Charter of the United Nations, international law principles and fundamental human rights standards.
Shelters or camps?
Despite the Board’s apparent refusal to allow the Palestinian committee of bureaucrats (NCAG) into Gaza, the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom just reported on plans aimed at relocating Palestinian residents into barbed wire fenced designated areas. This will allow the IDF to ‘deepen its grip on areas outside of the yellow line’.
“Surviving Palestinians will be herded into fenced “humanitarian shelters” policed by foreign forces,” as reported by Israel Hayom on July 2.
Images of a camp that’s been described as a concentration camp have emerged in Tel Al-Sultan, an area near Rafah where a pilot project of ‘humanitarian shelters’ will be established. Civilians will be channelled into Tel Al-Sultan, which was a densely populated area of Rafah from which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ordered to flee in April last year.
“Temporary Shelter Camp” (photo Tamer Nahed)
This image of stark, freshly flattened land surrounded by barbed wire fences and covered with masses of metal box shelters and no evidence of any permanent cement structures (as directed by Israel) appears to be a horrific precursor to
a very grim future for Palestinians in Gaza.
It recalls Israel Defence Minister Katz’s plan of a year ago of a ‘humanitarian city’ on the ruins of Rafah, where the goal was to screen people before they were allowed to enter to ensure they were not Hamas and then refuse any exits except to third countries.
Israel’s final solution in Gaza – banking on US cash for forced relocation
Legal immunity
The Board of Peace convened in Cyprus at the end of June for 3 days to “reset” after “the Iran war has completely shifted the attention in the last several months,” according to an official source. It sought to address the funding shortfalls, logistical delays and security challenges.
One of the more controversial draft resolutions was the Board’s plan to grant legal immunity to its members, contractors, and security forces; therefore
shielding the whole enterprise from potential legal proceedings.
As reported widely, human rights lawyers are highly critical of this proposal, including Palestinian American lawyer and academic, Noura Erakat, “They are basically saying there’s no external oversight, including applicable international law regarding occupation. It’s creating a legal system unto itself.”
At the same time, the IDF has reportedly called for fighting to resume as senior officers in the IDF claim that Hamas’ military wing is rebuilding. Hamas has maintained that it will only disarm under the auspices of the Palestinian NCAG and when Phase 1 of the ceasefire agreement is achieved, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces to agreed positions, full implementation of humanitarian measures and a complete end to Israel’s military attacks.
The nightmare on the ground in Gaza for Palestinians continues. The machinations of Trump’s Board of Peace appear to be
stymying any chance for genuine reconstruction of Gaza
led by Palestinians for Palestinians. The available evidence at this point is that the 1000-day-plus Israeli genocide in Gaza continues apace behind the veneer of Trump’s ‘peace’ plan and the continuing indifference of world powers.
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Cathy Peters is a former ABC RN producer/executive producer and Greens councillor on the former Marrickville Council. She also worked for a state Greens MP and is a long-time advocate for Palestinian rights. In 2014, she co-founded PSNA / BDS Australia. She has Jewish heritage, has travelled and volunteered in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.