Donald Trump's flagship Gaza peace project is stuck at the border — literally. Israel is refusing to allow the first construction contract issued by Trump's Board of Peace to move forward in Gaza, the Guardian reported, two months after the deal was signed.
In early August, the Board of Peace — the international body authorized by the United Nations in 2025 and chaired by Trump — awarded its first Gaza construction contract to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm. The job: build a fortified outpost, roughly 100 meters by 100 meters, to house 150 international troops who would form the vanguard of a long-promised international stabilization force.
Two months later, not a single truck has crossed into Gaza. Contractors and equipment are being turned away at the border. "Israel won't open the border," a person with direct knowledge of the matter told the Guardian. A Board of Peace spokesperson declined to comment; neither the Israeli military nor the government responded.
The outpost was supposed to be modest — a "mission support site" on land once used by the now-defunct Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-backed aid operation that ran from May to October 2025. The 150 troops would have been drawn from a larger contingent of 500 already contributed by Morocco and Kosovo.
The blockage is the latest sign that the October 2025 ceasefire exists more on paper than on the ground. Hamas officially dissolved its government in July but kept its civil service intact and remains the dominant power in the roughly 40 percent of Gaza outside Israeli military control. Israel has barred the new Palestinian administration from entering Gaza through Egypt. The international stabilization force, announced with fanfare in February, has yet to materialize — Indonesia, which pledged the largest contingent at 8,000 troops, put its plans on hold last spring.
Meanwhile Israel has pushed its so-called yellow line of control westward toward the Mediterranean, seizing more territory rather than withdrawing, and carried out regular strikes it describes as ceasefire enforcement. More than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the ceasefire took effect, Gaza health officials say; five Israeli soldiers have been killed in the same period.
The Board of Peace is central to Trump's claim to have ended the Gaza war — one of eight conflicts he says he resolved, a list he invoked again last week while complaining he had been denied the Nobel Peace Prize. Board officials reportedly hope Israel will relent after the country's October 27 election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hardened his position over the summer, openly defying Trump, his most important ally, as the vote approaches.
Until the border opens, the board's wider $2.45 billion reconstruction push remains stalled — and Gaza's two million residents wait.