Trump's Board of Peace says Israel's Gaza aid response falls short as floods swamp tents

The Board of Peace, the US-backed body set up to oversee Trump's Gaza peace plan, acknowledged the steps Israel is weighing but said flatly that the response remains insufficient. It urged Israel to immediately authorise the entry of essential goods for temporary shelter, plus water and sanitation infrastructure. Delays in approving supplies, the Board said, made a foreseeable humanitarian crisis worse and pushed back both the decommissioning of weapons and the handover of Hamas authority to a transitional government. Hamas's failure to disarm and transfer power, it added, has compounded civilians' suffering.

The criticism landed after a brutal weekend. On Sunday, three children and a woman were killed when a sand embankment collapsed onto tents in the central Strip, as rain inundated tens of thousands of tents. The UN says around 65% of Gaza's population, about 1.4 million people, now lives in tents or makeshift shelters after displacement caused by Israel's military campaign. Standing soaked in Gaza City, Mohammed Jneid told AFP that heavy rain hit from one side while sewage overflowed from the other, and the ground could no longer hold. Inside her tent, Islam Al Mobayed told AFP seven children were sheltering there, five of them young. This is not life, she said.

The UN's humanitarian agency OCHA said more than 150,000 tents sit outside Gaza ready to move in, but aid efforts are constrained by Israeli restrictions on supplies and equipment and by funding shortfalls. UN humanitarian coordinator Ramiz Alakbarov said on Monday that stocks of essential shelter and winter items inside Gaza had run out, and demanded Israel immediately lift all restrictions on entry. We have run out of time, he said.

Israel pushed back hard. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Michal Maayan said a winter plan drawn up in recent months with the Board of Peace and international charities has brought in more than 91,000 tents and over 8,200 trucks carrying tarpaulins, blankets, winter clothing and other equipment, according to Cogat, the military body responsible for aid. Cogat said it would not admit equipment that could be used for military purposes. Maayan accused Hamas of hoarding aid, saying winter hardships are a consequence of Hamas's actions and policy.

Hamas fired back in a statement carried by Palestinian media, calling the Board's comment a distorted account of the causes of the disaster. The group denied responsibility for ceasefire delays and pointed to an August statement from Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators that accused Israel of violations. It said Israeli restrictions block materials needed for shelter and recovery, and told the Board, as the ceasefire's implementor, to examine its own serious shortcoming.

The dispute has stalled the next stage of the peace plan. Under the deal that ended the two-year war in October 2025, Hamas agreed to give up governance and its weapons in exchange for a phased Israeli withdrawal from the 60% of Gaza it still occupied; Israel insists Hamas must fully disarm first. The war began with the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, when around 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry, whose figures the UN considers reliable, says Israel's campaign has killed 74,645 people, with more than 1,600 killed since the October ceasefire. Israel says six of its soldiers have died in Gaza since then.