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President Trump's Gaza peace plan appears to be stalling a week after he announced Hamas agreed to disarm. Israel says it won't start leaving Gaza until after Hamas gives up its weapons. A Palestinian technocratic government is supposed to take over and help with that disarmament, but it's slow going. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: When President Trump launched what he's calling his Board of Peace in February, he said it would be, quote, "very successful in Gaza."
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We're committed to ensuring Gaza is demilitarized, properly governed and beautifully rebuilt.
KELEMEN: The Bulgarian diplomat Trump put in charge of this effort, Nikolay Mladenov, talked about training Palestinian police to support a technocratic Palestinian governing committee. But members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza have not yet moved into the strip, and they haven't started training those police officers who would be the ones to disarm Hamas. Dan Rothem is an analyst with the Israel Policy Forum, who says the disarmament process has to be Palestinian-run to be credible.
DAN ROTHEM: It's Palestinian police that would need to lead the decommissioning process on the ground. That police force - new police force is not ready yet. It's not even started to train in Egypt or in Jordan. That process will take many weeks, if not months.
KELEMEN: In the meantime, there's a lot of confusion about the breakthrough President Trump announced last week. Hamas agreed to a new roadmap that would see Israel pull back as Hamas disarms. Israel rejected that sequencing, saying Hamas needs to disarm before it pulls back. And the Board of Peace clarified that it has a, quote, "common understanding" with Israel about the ultimate objectives. Rothem says this all started well when Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate developer Steve Witkoff first negotiated a ceasefire in October 2025, and Hamas released all of the hostages they held for over two years.
ROTHEM: I don't say this as criticism, but the people who drive here are not traditional diplomats. These guys are businessmen, and they want to see progress done hard and fast.
KELEMEN: As does President Trump.
ROTHEM: It's very clear that he likes to announce frameworks and declare achievements. And now it's up to the people underneath him to turn this into a reality.
KELEMEN: Take, for instance, the International Stabilization Force for Gaza. Indonesia initially promised thousands of troops, but put that offer on hold as Israel continued its airstrikes targeting Hamas. Morocco has since agreed to send 4 to 500 troops, and the Board of Peace says they are starting to build housing for them in Israeli-controlled parts of Gaza. Troops are also expected from Kosovo and Uganda. So far, the numbers are mostly symbolic, says Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen of the Middle East Institute.
LUCY KURTZER-ELLENBOGEN: There is a long road ahead of logistical challenges, of training that needs to be done, of vetting that needs to be done, of those who would be deployed, that we are certainly not looking at immediate action, even the best-case diplomatic scenario.
KELEMEN: And Israel is gearing up for elections, the first since the October 7 attack. Kurtzer-Ellenbogen says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a lot of pressure from his right flank not to agree to anything that requires an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. While Arab states accuse Israel of dragging its feet, the Trump administration has so far been reluctant to publicly pressure Netanyahu on this.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
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