An interview with Trump's Board of Peace High Rep for Gaza
Nickolay Mladenov's warning for the warring sides was stark, and unusually strong for Israel
In Prague, I interviewed Nickolay Mladenov, the Bulgarian diplomat, whom Donald Trump appointed as High Representative for Gaza on the Board of Peace.
You can watch the full interview below:
And this is a summary, first published in The Nightly.
The diplomat leading Donald Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza has warned Israel that permanently dividing Gaza will lead to another October 7, ranking progress of implementing the peace plan at four of out ten – at best.
In his first interview since appearing before the UN Security Council last week, Nickolay Mladenov warned Israel that the trajectory of the stalled peace plan in Gaza risked recreating the same conditions that led to the October 7 attacks, saying any attempt to permanently divide the enclave would create a ‘very rapidly ticking time bomb’ that would ‘explode again.’
‘You will end up with a very rapidly ticking time bomb which will explode again because of a lot of circumstances on the ground, including in terms of Hamas’ ability to rearm and recover,’ he said at the GLOBSEC Forum in Prague.
‘Because of the unimaginable humanitarian tragedy that you will have with 2 million people on the ground, this is a time bomb.
‘Whatever way you look at it, the scenario of a deteriorating status quo ends up in more tragedy, both for Israelis and for Palestinians.
‘So if anyone believes that you can sustain what you have now over a long period of time and think of it as being stable — from an Israeli perspective, for example — simply because you’ve pushed the Gazans a couple of kilometres in smaller pieces of land, you’ve pushed them away from your communities across the border is terribly wrong, and everything that led up to October 7th has proven that that strategy is wrong.
‘And you would only end up going back to the situation that you’ve had before, and inevitably more death and destruction, so nobody ultimately has an interest in that.
‘Of course, some people in the extremes of politics will probably say, well, you know, this is great, maybe that’ll give them some votes in an election here and there, but if you have to look responsibly at this question, none of this squares out positively, unless we actually go to a full implementation of what is in the 20-point plan.
‘Unless we start moving along that plan, reality will drag us back to a very, very bad situation.’
Hamas, a proxy of Iran’s which controls the Gaza Strip, killed 1195 people when it launched its deadly raids on October 7.
Israel retaliated with a bombing campaign of Gaza, which lasted two years, and Israel’s critics say was disproportionate in response. The Lancet estimates 75,000 people in Gaza have died a violent death since October 7.
The US President brought the warring sides to a ceasefire brokered last year, secured the release of the remaining hostages and established the Board of Peace, which is now trying to implement the 20-point peace plan agreed.
Israel heads to crucial elections this year with surveys pointing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government being ejected from power.
While praising the ceasefire as largely holding despite daily violations, Mladenov’s criticisms constitute his sharpest of Israel yet.
For example, he called out the Israeli authorities for withholding medical items, including X-ray scanners, saying Israel claimed they were also being used for military purposes.
‘In one word, it is terrible. In two words, it is extremely bad, it is worse than terrible,’ he said, when asked to describe the situation in Gaza.
‘We have two million people who are physically stuck in an area that is somewhere between 40 and 50 per cent of what Gaza used to be.’
He said that schools were not functioning, hygiene and food were extremely difficult, and access to basic services was practically non-existent.
‘People live in whatever’s left under the rubble of destroyed buildings, tents. It is indeed a terrible situation that needs to be addressed at all levels.’
But he said it was not a challenge that could be solved with a humanitarian solution alone.
‘The problem really is how do you square the circle between what the reality on the ground needs, which is Israeli withdrawal back to the perimeter so that you have Gaza back in its original shape and form,’ he said.
Mladenov said this relied on both sides upholding the 20-point peace plan struck earlier this year, in which Hamas would disarm and transition governance of the Gaza Strip to a transitional Palestinian authority.
Asked to measure the scale of progress of the peace plan, first agreed in October 2025, Mladenov put it at four.
‘If zero was before the ceasefire and ten is what would be an ideal situation, I think we move from zero to about four, at best,’ he said.
He said Hamas’ failure to disarm, in line with the agreement, meant that if the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza went in now, it would expose it to attack.
‘It can’t because if we were to do that, the committee would be put in a situation in which you would have continued Hamas security control over Gaza,’ he said.
‘The committee will then be responsible for services in an environment in which the Israeli restrictions will remain, in an environment in which, you know, probably the targeted operations will continue as well, most likely and that will undermine the whole process.’
Mladenov told the UN Security Council last week that the ‘deteriorating status quo’ in Gaza was at risk of becoming permanent. And in a written report, the Board called Hamas’s refusal to disarm “the principal obstacle” to progress.
Asked if it was a mistake of the peace plan to make it conditional on Hamas disarming, Mladenov said there was no alternative.
‘I know what we’re asking Hamas to do is very difficult for them, to give up weapons, to support a process which actually excludes them from governance and Gaza,’ he said.
‘This is a very difficult decision for anyone to take, and particularly for a movement like that, but this is what they agreed to in the plan. And this is what we’ve now mapped out, what we think is a dignified way to do it, because what is the alternative to this?’