According to Axios, US President Donald Trump is expected next week to unveil the composition of a proposed Gaza Board of Peace, billed as the centerpiece of phase two of his ceasefire plan. At its heart will be Nikolay Mladenov, the former UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, named as the board’s on-the-ground representative in Gaza.
The appointment would place Mladenov in a pivotal role, mediating between international intervention, Israeli power, and the fragile question of Palestinian autonomy in a territory devastated by nearly two years of war. His selection over the former British prime minister Tony Blair has prompted renewed scrutiny—not only of his diplomatic record, but of what this proposed governance structure says about who will shape Gaza’s future and whether Palestinian self-determination has any meaningful place within it.
From Sofia to the Middle East
Born in Sofia in 1972, Mladenov comes from a family deeply embedded in Bulgaria’s Cold War establishment. His father worked for the Committee for State Security, the communist-era intelligence service, while an uncle served as a diplomat. Mladenov has often suggested that growing up amid Bulgaria’s transition from socialism to EU membership gave him a particular sensitivity to conflicts rooted in identity, nationalism, and state collapse.
After studying international relations in Sofia and war studies at King’s College London, he worked with the Open Society Foundations and the World Bank in the late 1990s before founding the European Institute in Sofia—a think tank promoting neoliberal reform and European integration. His political ascent was swift. Elected to Bulgaria’s parliament in 2001, he later served in the European parliament before becoming defense minister and then foreign minister between 2009 and 2013. His move to the United Nations followed in 2013, first as special representative to Iraq and then, from 2015 to 2020, as UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process.
Taking up the post in the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, Mladenov pursued what allies described as a “pragmatic, bottom-up” approach, focused less on final-status negotiations than on preventing repeated military escalation.
Mladenov played a central role in mediating the 2018 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and was frequently involved in negotiations over fuel, salaries, and reconstruction funds, gaining the trust of both sides. Former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni regarded him as a “fair broker,” and the late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah reportedly reached out to him quickly to explore ceasefire options during the escalations following October 7.
A contested neutrality
Yet Mladenov’s reputation as a “balanced broker” has long been contested. His habit of condemning Israeli military force and Palestinian armed resistance in equal measure won him credibility in UN and Israeli liberal circles, but alienated many Palestinians, who saw the symmetry as obscuring the realities of occupation.
Tensions with the Palestinian leadership became explicit in 2018, when senior PLO figures declared that Mladenov was no longer considered an honest broker, accusing him of marginalising the Palestinian Authority by negotiating directly with Hamas. Fatah officials went further, claiming his approach had legitimised Hamas’s de facto rule in Gaza while weakening Palestinian national representation.
That distrust deepened with Mladenov’s public support for the Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration in 2020. He argued that normalisation between Israel and several Arab states had helped avert West Bank annexation and opened new avenues for regional cooperation. For Palestinians, the accords were widely seen as a betrayal—normalisation without occupation-ending concessions, and without Palestinian consent.
Alignments and influence
Mladenov’s network is extensive and longstanding. Since the late 1990s, he has cultivated close ties with figures across Israel’s political spectrum, including Avigdor Lieberman, as well as senior diplomats and security officials. Since 2022, he has served as director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi, an institution central to shaping Emirati foreign policy.
The UAE’s strategic alignment—with Israel, Washington and the post-Abraham Accords regional order—has sharpened criticism of Mladenov’s role. Middle East Eye has described him as “the UAE’s man in Gaza”, a characterisation that reflects wider concerns that Gulf states will wield outsized influence over any international governance mechanism.
He is also a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a thinktank known for its close ties to US and Israeli policy circles, and is reported to have longstanding links with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief architect of the Abraham Accords.
Why Mladenov, not Blair?
Tony Blair was initially presented as Trump’s preferred candidate for the Gaza governance structure, but opposition from Arab and Muslim-majority governments—rooted in his role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq—made his appointment untenable. Blair has since been relegated to a less visible executive role.
Mladenov offered a more palatable alternative. A non-Western European diplomat, experienced in Gaza, acceptable to Israel, familiar to Palestinian factions, and embedded in Gulf political networks. Yet his appointment does little to alter the underlying reality. The proposed Board of Peace remains an externally imposed authority, with Palestinians absent from genuine leadership.
In that sense, Mladenov’s role is less a break from the past than a refinement of it—international trusteeship repackaged through a figure whose credibility rests not on democratic mandate, but on access, pragmatism, and endurance within a system that has repeatedly failed to deliver Palestinian freedom.
