An aerial view from Sheikh Ridwan in Gaza City, Gaza, shows the heavy destruction on October 25, 2025. Numerous buildings are reduced to rubble, and civilian homes and belongings sustain severe damage. Palestinian families struggle to survive amid the ruins. Photo / Getty Images
The United States military-led “co-ordination centre” charged with implementing US President Donald Trump’s peace plan in Gaza is replacing Israel as the overseer of humanitarian aid to the enclave, even as multiple people familiar with its first weeks of operations have described it as chaotic and indecisive.
In a transition that was completed on Saturday, the Israelis are now “part of the conversation”, but decisions will be taken by the wider body, a US official said, referencing the shift from COGAT, the unit within the Israel Defence Forces responsible for regulating and facilitating aid into Gaza, to the Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre (CMCC) set up in southern Israel near the Gaza border.
Several people familiar with the transition said the move relegates Israel to a secondary role in determining how and what humanitarian relief can enter Gaza as the centre takes the lead.
Since the Gaza ceasefire began last month, humanitarian aid, while improved, has remained significantly restricted by Israel.
More than 40 countries and organisations are represented in the US-led centre and “one of the benefits … of bringing them all together is that enables you to really sort through fact from fiction and get a clearer understanding of what is happening on the ground, where the needs lie,” Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the US Central Command, said in an interview.
Until now, the IDF has opened only two entryways for aid into Gaza, with the vast majority of aid coming through Kerem Shalom in the south.
There have been no direct deliveries to northern Gaza since early September.
Many of the trucks allowed to enter, according to the United Nations, are commercial shipments of goods offered for sale in Gaza markets that few have money to buy.
The transit point between Jordan, where large quantities of aid are waiting, and Israel over the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan River has been closed for much of the year.
The majority of international aid organisations have largely been barred from bringing food into Gaza for months since Israel imposed intrusive new registration rules they have refused to sign.
Aid organisations long have complained of Israel’s restrictions on “dual-use items” that it deems capable of being turned into weapons, which have included tent poles, medical scalpels, and ointment to treat skin infections.
“Israel is blocking the Trump plan’s humanitarian clauses,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said on Friday in anticipation of the transition to CMCC control. “For us, to have the US actively engaged is very good news.”
Although the Trump peace plan includes a massive increase in the amount of assistance, the US has not said which, if any, of the Israeli restrictions might now be lifted, how the centre plans to manage the massive aid project and whether new rules would be acceptable to aid organisations wary of any kind of military control.
COGAT did not respond to questions about its role.
“Our appeal is make the plan a reality,” Egeland said. “Of course, the credibility of the US is at stake here.”
Trump has acknowledged that he pressured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the peace agreement, but it’s unclear how far he is willing to go in ensuring that Israel comports with all elements of his 20-point plan.
As part of the implementation, the US Central Command, which is responsible for planning and co-ordinating the US military in the region, has also stepped up its own surveillance of Gaza, including the use of drones to monitor both aid distribution and the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Last week, Centcom posted a video taken from an MQ-9 Reaper drone of what it said were Hamas “operatives” looting a heavily laden aid truck in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
A second US official said publication of the video was part of an effort to pressure Hamas, whose militants have emerged to control parts of Gaza vacated by the IDF as part of the plan.
The official is one of at least a dozen people familiar with CMCC operations interviewed for this report, most of whom discussed its progress and difficulties on the condition of anonymity.
Despite the official ceasefire, Israel has reserved the right to respond to anything it determines is a threat to its own security, and it has continued occasional airstrikes in Gaza and fired on civilians who approach territory controlled by the IDF.
“As long as Centcom is activated and operating there, and as long as the US is sort of putting its reputation on the line, so to speak, I think you’re going to see a lot more US assets and US-military run operations,” said an aid worker who recently returned to Washington from the CMCC.
Publicly announcing the drone overflights “was a signal that we’re not relying on IDF intelligence or IDF drones … We have our own assets that we are operating.”
Even as it continues monitoring Hamas activities, continued US pressure on Israel is considered critical to moving the peace plan forward and ensuring ongoing support from governments in Europe and the Middle East, and nongovernmental organisations, all of whose buy-in is deemed vital.
Israel has pushed back forcefully against any suggestion that it is under the US thumb and that Centcom is collecting its own intelligence to verify its compliance with the agreement.
“The whole activity of the Americans operating in Gaza is something new,” said Yossi Kuperwasser, a former IDF general who served as director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. “But the rules, in my mind, of sharing information are the same. Whatever is valuable for Israel is shared.”
With Trump having claimed that Gaza is now on the path to a peaceful, prosperous future, “the one vital, strategic mission” for the US is now “to babysit Bibi … to make sure there is no return to fighting”, one person familiar with White House thinking said, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
In the weeks since the ceasefire, the Administration has sent a steady stream of high-level minders to visit the centre and Netanyahu’s Government, including Vice-President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Dan Caine and, last weekend, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump has outlined a grand post-ceasefire vision, describing his Gaza initiative as an “historic dawn of a new Middle East”, including the expansion of the Abraham Accords, the first-term diplomatic normalisation agreement he brokered between Israel and four Arab states.
Many regional leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will visit the White House in mid-November, are waiting for assurances that the war is truly over and that Israel will relinquish control over the enclave.
On Tuesday, Trump will host President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, with whom he hopes to expand US security relations.
Saudi Arabia and other Arab states “are not going to settle for normalisation” without getting Netanyahu to take moves towards a Palestinian state, which he has categorically rejected, said the person familiar with Administration thinking.
“This is both the president and the moment” to push Netanyahu, the person said. The question for Trump, they added, is “will he do it?”
Led by Centcom under US Army Lieutenant-General Patrick Frank, with 200 US troops, the CMCC is headquartered in a three-storey building in the city of Kiryat Gat, about 65km southwest of Jerusalem and 32km northeast of Gaza.
The Trump Administration has appointed Steven Fagin, a career Foreign Service officer most recently US ambassador to Yemen, as the civilian lead.
The Americans, with high-tech monitoring equipment, occupy one floor of the building, with Israeli military, intelligence and civilian personnel on another. Representatives of dozens of what Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper has said are “partner nations, nongovernmental organisations, international institutions and the private sector” are on a separate floor.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom are among a number of countries with official representation.
In an October 21 announcement of the centre’s opening, Centcom said its mission was “to support stabilisation efforts”, to “help facilitate the flow of humanitarian, logistical and security assistance” and to “monitor implementation of the ceasefire agreement”.
No US troops, the statement emphasised, will be deployed into Gaza.
The initial steps in Trump’s plan have been achieved.
They are: a ceasefire in the two-year war that is shaky but largely holding; the release by Hamas of all 20 remaining Israeli hostages still alive and most of the bodies of the dead, and by Israel of nearly 2000 Palestinian prisoners; IDF withdrawal from about half of Gaza and improvement in humanitarian aid deliveries.
But many elements of the agreement remain works in progress or unaddressed.
Several people who are working inside the centre or have had interactions with it said that decision-making is hampered by, among other things, the need for each government and institution represented to “send it up the flagpole” to capitals and headquarters for approval, as one person put it.
At the same time, this person said, “I don’t think they have any money to do anything yet”.
During a visit “at the end of last week”, said another at the weekend, “it was a lot of people sitting at desks with computers and a lot of uncertainty.”
The emergence of Hamas and other militant groups to reassert control over parts of Gaza vacated by the IDF has made their disarmament - a key part of the agreement - progressively more difficult.
Hamas has said it will turn over its weapons only to Palestinians. The agreement calls for establishment of an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) comprising troops from Arab and other governments who will train and supervise a new, vetted Palestinian police force.
US envoy Steve Witkoff said last week that a possible “model” for disarmament - and the peace plan’s promise of amnesty for militants who lay down their arms - may lie in the case of about 200 Hamas fighters who remain stranded in Rafah, in the Israeli-occupied portion of Gaza, possibly in what remains of the militant group’s tunnel network.
A Hamas official confirmed there had been meetings with mediators over the fate of the trapped fighters.
Neither the Palestinian police force nor the ISF yet exist. Many of the countries seen as possible participants, particularly those in the Arab and Muslim world, have indicated they don’t want to be involved in the process of disarming Hamas or contending with what they see as trigger-happy Israeli forces still behind the “yellow line” now separating them from the rest of Gaza.
Most have also insisted on a UN mandate, something Washington has begun to address with a UN Security Council resolution it circulated last week.
The draft resolution basically gives a UN seal of approval to the Trump plan, including authorising the ISF, which US officials have said would not be deployed until at least January, to remain in place for two years.
Other security council members are seeking stronger and more specific humanitarian commitments, as well as a path to Palestinian statehood.
To pass, the resolution requires nine of the 15 Security Council votes, and no veto from any of its five permanent members, including potential spoilers Russia and China - as well as Britain and France, both of which formally recognised the Palestinian state in late September.
“The ball is in the US court … we have lots of ideas,” said an official from one council member government.
The plan also calls for establishment of a Board of Peace, which Trump has said he would head but whose members have not yet been identified, to supervise and support internal Gaza governance through a committee of Palestinians.
Eight Palestinian factions and armed groups - including the Fatah party that leads the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, and Hamas - have launched discussions, brokered by Egypt, to select the committee.
It is unclear whether either Israel or the US, which have both ruled out any Hamas participation in Gaza governance, will accept it.
Gaza reconstruction has also become a point of contention.
Some senior Trump Administration advisers have pushed for a programme, according to several people familiar with the planning, that would quickly build up to 16 “safe communities” behind existing Israeli lines in Gaza. Within these communities, vetted Palestinians could move and receive security, food and other humanitarian aid - potentially for years - while Hamas is disarmed and longer-term plans for governance and reconstruction are rolled out.
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who was brought in to help broker the ceasefire and future planning, “wants to see some kind of success made of IDF-occupied Gaza”, while Hamas’ ongoing presence in the rest of the enclave would make any quick reconstruction difficult, said the person familiar with administration thinking.
Aid organisations have largely rejected that proposal, seeing it as a return to the formula of the Israel and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, whose now-suspended food distribution sites, secured by armed US contractors, resulted in hundreds of Gazan civilians being shot by IDF forces surrounding them.
European countries in the CMCC “can in no way take part in something which is seen as a strategic tool for one party to the conflict, which is Israel”, Egeland said.
Such a plan, he said “is doomed. It’s bound to be a failure.”
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