Gaza requires urgent international attention.
What is happening in the besieged and devastated Strip at the moment by far exceeds an unfolding humanitarian disaster; it is a calculated geopolitical reshaping. Israel is actively executing a plan to permanently occupy the vast majority of Gaza, with consequences that require little elaboration considering what we already know about the ongoing genocide.
Currently, much of the international debate centers on a single official: Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov. The former United Nations Special Coordinator has been designated by the United States as the Executive Director of the Trump administration’s newly established ‘Board of Peace’ – an international council founded to oversee the implementation of Washington’s 20-point Gaza roadmap.
The issue, however, is much bigger than a single Washington-backed bureaucrat. A growing number of Palestinians and political analysts accuse Mladenov of manufacturing the very conditions that continue to obstruct progress on the agreement’s transition to its second phase.
Under the framework, the official transition to this second phase – which Trump and the Board of Peace declared to have begun in January 2026 – demands sweeping, one-sided Palestinian concessions, most notably the total disarmament of armed factions.
This demand is a recipe for the failure of the entire project, especially given that Israel has completely failed to implement the most basic requirements of the agreement’s first phase. It has refused to halt its routine military incursions, has failed to withdraw its forces to the originally mandated ‘Yellow Line‘ demarcation, and continues to deny entry permits to the technocratic committee slated to assume civil governance of the Strip.
Mladenov’s insistence on Palestinian disarmament before the agreement can advance – without a single guarantee of Israeli compliance – conveniently flips the narrative. It cynically reframes systematic starvation and the blockade of medical and construction supplies as a Palestinian failure to honor commitments.
In reality, Mladenov holds no real cards; he is merely a cog in a larger machinery controlled by Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister has made it explicitly clear that he has no intention of following any peace roadmap, planning instead for the permanent, incremental takeover of Gaza.
Speaking at a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement on May 28, Netanyahu explained his strategy with total clarity, abandoning all diplomatic doublespeak: “We are currently squeezing Hamas; we now control 60% of the territory of the Strip – you know this. We were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to…” he said, pausing as an audience member shouted “100!”
Netanyahu smiled and responded: “Let’s go step by step. First of all, 70. Let’s start with that. We’re pressing them from all sides, we’ll deal with the remnants.”
This is the actual blueprint of the Israeli government, declared openly to domestic audiences. The admission was so brazen that even US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed frustration at Netanyahu’s candor. Testifying before Congress on June 2, Rubio remarked, “We have a plan – it doesn’t call for that,” referring to further Israeli territorial expansion.
Yet, Rubio quickly reverted to Washington’s standard line: “And at the end of the day, we understand that what we want, and I think what the Israelis would ultimately want, is a Gaza that is governed by a non-Hamas entity.”
Hellbound and Down 