Roughly a dozen Palestinians received official invitations on Tuesday to serve on the technocratic committee slated to manage Gaza’s daily affairs in place of Hamas, an Arab diplomat and a Palestinian official told The Times of Israel.

The letters were signed by the Board of Peace’s designated high representative, Nikolay Mladenov, two of the technocrats who received the letters said.

Mladenov, a Bulgarian diplomat who previously served as the UN special envoy to the Middle East, will be tasked with directly overseeing the technocratic committee on behalf of the Board of Peace. He held meetings last week with senior officials in Israel and the Palestinian Authority in preparation for the transition to phase two of US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, the Arab diplomat said.

Inked in October, phase one saw the start of a fragile ceasefire along with a hostage-prisoner swap. Phase two is supposed to see the disarmament of Hamas, the completion of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, the reconstruction of the Strip and the establishment of the various transitional bodies tasked with running the enclave before it is handed off to a reformed PA.

One of those bodies is the Board of Peace, a panel of world leaders headed by Trump that will oversee the Palestinian technocratic committee, formally called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCACG). Washington had aimed to unveil the Board of Peace last month, but that announcement has been delayed as its foreign policy priorities have shifted between Gaza, Venezuela and Iran.

The US has also struggled to recruit international support for the plan, with the Arab diplomat citing heavy skepticism that Hamas will agree to disarm or that Israel will agree to further withdraw from the Strip and allow for its reconstruction.

While the Trump administration had hoped to announce this week the world leaders joining Trump on the Board of Peace, those plans are up in the air, said a senior Arab diplomat.

The US informed........

© The Times of Israel