Peace envoy warns Gaza status quo may become permanent divide

The high representative overseeing the United States-founded Board of Peace for Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, has warned that the deteriorating status quo in the devastated Palestinian enclave risks becoming permanent.

Speaking on Thursday to the United Nations Security Council, Mladenov presented a roadmap detailing obligations for Israel and Hamas to implement a permanent ceasefire. He urged the Security Council to use every means at its disposal to press Hamas to disarm, while also saying that Israel must uphold its commitment under a ceasefire agreed in October.

“Let me say this clearly: the implementation cannot advance through Palestinian obligations alone,” Mladenov said, speaking via video call.

“The continued killings and Israeli restrictions affecting humanitarian flows are not abstract issues,” he said.

The war that Israel launched following the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas and other armed Palestinian groups was halted by a ceasefire in October 2025. More than 72,775 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict. But the Israeli military maintains a strict security regime, and many hundreds more have been killed in the past seven months. On Thursday, an Israeli drone attack killed a 26-year-old in Gaza’s al-Mahatta area, east of Deir el-Balah city, according to Wafa news agency.

Conflict monitors warn that since the ceasefire in the US-Israel war on Iran was struck last month, Israeli bombardment of Gaza has accelerated. Violent raids by settlers and the military in the occupied West Bank have also been increasing.

Mladenov, a veteran Bulgarian diplomat, warned of the risks of inaction by both parties.

“The risk is that the deteriorating status quo becomes permanent: a divided Gaza, Hamas holding military and administrative control over two million people across less than half the territory.

“Those people are likely to remain trapped in the rubble, dependent on aid with no meaningful reconstruction, because reconstruction financing will not follow where weapons have not been laid down,” Mladenov said.

“And the result? Another generation growing up in tents in fear, with despair as the most rational thing for them to feel.”

This, he said, is a scenario that Israelis, Palestinians and the region “should all fear and mobilise to avoid”.

In January, the US announced that the Gaza ceasefire was moving to phase two, which is supposed to focus on Hamas’s disarmament, long-term governance and the establishment of a panel of Palestinian technocrats to lead post-war Gaza. It also calls for the gradual retreat of the Israeli army, which still controls more than 50 percent of the Palestinian territory, and the deployment of an international stabilising force.

But with the war in Iran drawing the world’s attention amid a global energy crisis, the transition to the second phase has been stalled for weeks.