Egypt sent a new aid convoy to Gaza this week as part of ongoing efforts to help the Palestinians in the Strip survive the harsh conditions they are living under as Israel continues to prohibit reconstruction of the area it pulled out of as part of the October 2025 ceasefire agreement signed in Sharm El-Sheikh.
A communiqué by the Red Crescent, in charge of handing over aid to Gaza, said that the convoy this week carried over two tons of material. It is the 232nd convoy in the Zad Al-Ezza programme, and apart from food, medicines, and relief material, it also carried fuel desperately needed for the operation of damaged hospitals in Gaza.
“We are trying to help as much as possible. We are fully aware of the terrible living conditions that Palestinians in Gaza have to live under pending an agreement that will allow for much more sustainable aid deliveries to cover the essential needs of Palestinians who are still living amidst the rubble of the two-year Israeli war,” said an Egyptian government official.
In addition to the 55 million tons of debris that Palestinians in Gaza live among, UN bodies assess that almost 85 per cent of Gazan dwellings have been destroyed and that only five per cent of agricultural land is still arable.
The Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment that the UN conducted at the end of the war concluded that the Israeli war had set back human development in the impoverished enclave by 77 years. Today, the UN says that Gaza needs over $71 billion for reconstruction efforts that will take a decade.
In addition to killing close to 80,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and inflicting severe and crippling injuries on 100,000 others, the Israeli war destroyed practically all elements of life in Gaza.
UN agencies and humanitarian bodies say that the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza that started on 7 October 2023 and continued until 10 October 2025 when the ceasefire, signed a day earlier, went into effect has inflicted enormous damage on Gaza in terms of infrastructure and economic activity.
“We are nowhere near the start of the reconstruction promised under US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stalling, and nothing is moving forward except some work in areas under Israeli control,” said a UN source from one of the agencies concerned.
The Egyptian official agreed that almost a year after the signing of the ceasefire hardly any progress has been made. On the contrary, he added, Israel is still conducting military attacks against Gaza.
“The Israeli plan is to stall. Israel is conducting military attacks while the implementation of the first phase of the peace plan is not clear,” he said.
According to the Trump peace plan, the first phase should have allowed for the end of hostilities and the entry of hundreds of aid trucks on a daily basis. This has not been happening despite the fact that Hamas honoured its commitment to release all the Israeli hostages that had been held captive in Gaza since the beginning of the war and to hand over the bodies of all those who died in captivity.
Instead, Nickolay Mladenov, director-general of the Board of Peace established according to the Trump plan, has been pushing Hamas to start a process of disarmament. Hamas has argued that owing to the failure of Israel to honour its part of the first phase of the plan, there is no reason for it to move forward.
The Palestinian resistance movement also had issues with an action plan that Mladenov drafted. However, over the past three weeks, Cairo has been trying to encourage Hamas to “build on the Mladenov plan and to get some progress done,” as the Egyptian official put it.
“We know the Mladenov plan falls short of Palestinian expectations, but dismissing it outright is not constructive,” he said. “Rather than rejecting the scheme, we have been working with Hamas, Qatar, and Turkey to adjust it and make it more balanced, since all the parties agree it needed greater consideration of the Palestinian perspective.”
Despite the five meetings that Cairo has hosted, the same Egyptian source said much more work needs to be done. “We have agreed on the need to get two things moving: the ISF [International Stabilisation Force] for Gaza and the Gaza Ruling Committee,” he said.
According to the Trump plan, an international stabilisation force should enter Gaza to monitor the ceasefire. A committee of Palestinian technocrats should also take over the management of the enclave from the Hamas government that has been in charge of Gaza for the past two decades.
Earlier this year, a tentative agreement on the composition of the ISF was settled among the participating countries, Hamas, and Mladenov. An agreement was also reached among the Palestinian factions on the composition of the 15-member National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), with Ali Shaath as chief commissioner.
However, according to an informed Arab diplomatic source, on the ground no progress has happened due to two problems. The first relates to the interpretation of the mandate of both the ISF and the NCAG, and the second is the Israeli reluctance to give adequate security guarantees that it will refrain from conducting any strikes that could compromise the safety of the members of either body.
The source said that despite the give-and-take that has been going on for close to six months, Israel is still determined that the ISF should take responsibility for disarming Hamas, “something that the states contributing to the mission have repeatedly declined,” he said.
“We have been telling the Americans and the Israelis that for Hamas to put down its arms, we need to have a Palestinian replacement to take over Gaza and to have Israel end its strikes against civilians in Gaza and its military expansion,” the Egyptian official said.
While none of the diplomatic sources who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly had anticipated an easy ceasefire, today many are apprehensive about the Israeli intentions for the coming weeks and months, given the countdown to the legislative elections in Israel scheduled for late October and the widely shared concern that Netanyahu might find it politically useful for his campaign to increase the level and frequency of strikes against targets in Gaza.
This apprehension has been supported by the negative response that Israel demonstrated to a decision by Hamas to dissolve its government in Gaza to allow for the handover to the NCAG.
“I am not sure that Netanyahu will easily allow the entry of the NCAG into Gaza before the elections,” the Arab diplomatic source said.
“We are still working on the issue. We are engaging all the parties. We make phone calls and hold meetings, and we will continue to do so,” said the Egyptian source.
He added that while these talks might not produce any real progress, “and we are not blind to the realities on the ground,” at least they keep the ceasefire going.
“We are fully aware of the Israeli violations of the ceasefire, but by keeping the follow-up talks going we are making sure, as far as we can, that the war does not start anew,” he added.
The source said that while some of the Palestinian negotiators have been based in Cairo, some come and go between Egypt and Turkey and Qatar.
In the coming few days, he added, Egypt might be hosting a high-level round of consultations, especially if US Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff arrives in the region ahead of the anticipated Netanyahu visit to the White House before the end of the month.
The source admitted that the lack of confidence between the Palestinians and both Mladenov and Witkoff does not make the mediator’s job easy, “but we are working on the issue and closely coordinating with the Qataris and Turks.”
Over the past few months, Hamas and Islamic Jihad figures have repeatedly told the mediators that they cannot ignore Mladenov’s bias, according to them amounting to “a draft inspired by the Israeli wish-list for Gaza”.
They have also criticised the bias of Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and his other Middle East envoy.
This week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told a political gathering in Israel that Witkoff had privately referred to the Palestinians in Gaza as “two million Nazis”.
“Such statements on the part of Israeli officials do not help, but nobody is blind to the US bias towards Israel,” said the Egyptian official. “We will continue to engage Washington on the issue,” he said.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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