The UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, demanded on Sunday that Israel "immediately allow" the entry of the technocratic committee and the international stabilisation force into the Gaza Strip , in accordance with US President Donald Trump's plan.
Mladenov made the demand in a letter to Yoram Halevi, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), in response to Halevi's announcement of the suspension of goods entering Gaza through private traders—the channel by which most goods enter—"until further notice", according to Haaretz.
Mladenov stated that "Hamas 's extortion of traders and importers (which the movement denies) is not a new problem," and that if the entry of goods through the private sector were to cease, similar pressure would be exerted on humanitarian aid delivered to Gaza through the United Nations and international organisations.
The UN envoy also called on the Israeli government to immediately approve the implementation of the pilot project, under which the Palestinian technocratic committee and the international stabilisation force would begin operating in a limited area of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, currently under the control of the Israeli army and where Hamas has no presence.
The new message came after the Israeli Security Cabinet, in late July, on the eve of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's trip to Washington, approved the deployment of a limited number of international peacekeeping troops to Rafah. However, the decision was later reversed under pressure from ministers of the religious Zionist movement, and Netanyahu announced in late August that the deployment had not been approved.
Mladenov concluded his demands by calling on the Israel to cooperate with the self-styled Peace Board in establishing a new mechanism for managing the supply of goods to the Gaza Strip. According to him, this matter is currently under discussion between the board's staff and Israel.
On Friday, Hamas criticized Mladenov's statements, accusing him of "aligning himself with Israel's pretexts for obstructing the entry of goods into the Gaza Strip and deepening the humanitarian crisis there". This came in a statement issued by the movement in response to what it described as Mladenov's adoption of the Israeli narrative regarding the decision by Netanyahu's government to suspend the entry of goods designated for the private sector into Gaza.
It considered Mladenov's position to be "blatant bias and alignment with the occupation and its pretexts aimed at obstructing the entry of goods, in order to deepen the humanitarian crisis for our besieged Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip".
The movement denied Israeli accusations of interfering in the mechanisms for bringing goods destined for the private sector into Gaza, imposing taxes, and threatening merchants. It asserted that these accusations were "baseless", describing them as "a repeated and blatant Zionist attempt to exacerbate and deepen the humanitarian crisis and evade the obligations of the ceasefire agreement".
Since the beginning of the war, the United Nations and humanitarian organisations have emphasised that the humanitarian corridor, which includes aid organizations and governments, cannot meet the long-term needs of Gaza's population, and that there is a need to strengthen the commercial corridor.
Since the ceasefire, Israel has only allowed eight merchants to submit applications to bring goods into the Gaza Strip, compared to approximately 1,500 before the war.