Leading NGOs slam Board of Peace for 'failing' to deliver Gaza aid pledges

“Leading NGOs slam Board of Peace for 'failing' to deliver Gaza aid pledges Submitted by Yasmine El-Sabawi on Thu, 05/21/2026 - 19:33 Organisations say Israel is actively obstructing aid despite Trump's own 20-point plan calling for assistance to 'proceed without interference' A Palestinian woman sits amid the rubble from an Israeli strike in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, on 20 May 2026 (Mahmoud Issa/Reuters) Off A group of some of the world's leading aid organisations on Thursday said US President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" for Gaza is "failing", precisely because Israel is still obstructing the vast majority of aid into the enclave. At a briefing for reporters at the United Nations in New York, Janti Soeripto, the CEO of Save the Children US, said her organisation, among several others, has reached out to the Board of Peace and offered meetings, expertise, and direct reporting from local staff on the ground. Little to nothing has come of it. "Six months on, children in Gaza are still not in school, malnourished, and not being treated for their wounds. The electricity grid and water infrastructure is 90 percent still unusable," she said. "The [UN] resolution and the peace plan called for immediate full aid, no interference of aid, and the immediate rehabilitation of infrastructure. By all metrics, this has not happened." The text of Trump's 20-point plan for Gaza - upon which the October 2025 ceasefire was agreed, and which formed the basis for the Board of Peace - says that the "entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference" from Israel or Hamas, and that it will be facilitated by "the United Nations and its agencies, and the Red Crescent, in addition to other international institutions not associated in any manner with either party". But the aid groups at Thursday's briefing - Oxfam, Refugees International, and Save the Children US - which have longstanding projects in Gaza that predate the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, said that at least 600 trucks filled with basic supplies were meant to enter Gaza every day since the ceasefire came into effect, and the current figure is nowhere close. Last week, the UN's office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said that only one in every two aid trucks from Egypt was allowed to offload at Israeli-controlled crossings along Gaza’s perimeter in the first 11 days of this month. In addition, only 700 Palestinians have been medically evacuated since the ceasefire, when some 18,000 people require a critical level of care they cannot get inside Gaza, the aid organisations said. Israel is in charge of who is permitted to leave Gaza, and who is allowed to get back inside - even when those Palestinians are crossing into Egypt. "The obstruction needs to stop, and this is one of the most vexing things about this. It's not a particularly complex or sophisticated negotiation," Jeremy Konyndyk, a former Obama and Biden administration official who is now the president of Refugees International, told reporters. "Other parts of the deal, the political and security elements, are hugely complex, and the implementation of those will be hugely complex. Not blocking humanitarian aid is not a complex proposition. All you have to do is not block humanitarian aid." 'Level of impunity' As of Thursday, the Gaza health ministry said 883 Palestinians have been killed during this ceasefire period, either from Israeli air strikes or live fire from soldiers. US lobbied Saudi Arabia to release funds for Gaza 'Board of Peace' amid cash crunch Read More » But a report put together by the Board of Peace itself earlier this month insisted that Hamas is "the principal obstacle" to the board's ability to take the ceasefire to the next stage, given its refusal to disarm fully without permanent security guarantees from Israel and its primary backer, the US. "The Board of Peace report, in my own view, did not read like an honest broker trying to hold all sides equally... It came across as more one-sided," Konyndyk said. "[It] talks in very oblique, roundabout terms about some of the continuing humanitarian struggles, but at no point does it actually ever acknowledge the reason for those - the principal reason being the continued pattern of obstruction by the Israeli government in direct contradiction of their obligations under the ceasefire deal," he added. "What is unique here...is just the level of impunity." What the Board of Peace needs, the aid groups agreed, is political will and accountability, because the framework - and even the funding - is all there for a project like this to succeed. The numbers Nine of the member nations of the Board of Peace have pledged a total of $7bn towards relief efforts in Gaza, US President Donald Trump announced at the group's inaugural meeting in Washington, DC, in February. The countries are Kazakhstan; Azerbaijan; the UAE; Morocco; Bahrain; Qatar; Saudi Arabia; Uzbekistan; and Kuwait. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait are each contributing $1bn, per statements by their representatives at the meeting. Israel says ceasefire void if Hamas won't disarm, Board of Peace tells Palestinians Read More » Trump said the US is investing a further $10bn, but it was understood to be for the overall operations of the Board of Peace and not necessarily for Gaza. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs will also raise $2bn for Gaza, he added, and the international football body Fifa will be raising $75m for sports-related projects in the enclave. Japan has also committed to host an aid fundraiser, Trump announced, which will be attended by regional nations, including South Korea, the Philippines, and Singapore. "China is going to be involved, and I think Russia is going to be involved," the president said at the time. The Board of Peace charter makes no mention of the words "Gaza" or "Palestinian". The Trump administration has also broken from decades of precedent in no longer making a "two-state solution" a US policy goal. Trump has not hidden the fact that he wants to see the board - of which he is the chair for life - tackle other international crises, given, in his view, the UN's inability to do so. Spain has refused to join the board, along with most of Europe. Some European Union representatives attended the February meeting as "observers". The Vatican declined to attend, and Canada's invitation was rescinded by Trump. Israel's genocide in Gaza Washington News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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