The newly-created Board of Peace for the Gaza Strip will have a European director-general, former Bulgarian minister and member of the European Parliament, Nickolay Mladenov.
His appointment was confirmed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and by US officials. The Board of Peace has been set up as part of the feeble peace plan pushed by US President Donald Trump. It is still unclear how effective it will be. According to his peace plan, Trump will head this board. The board will oversee a technical government in Palestine, help with reconstruction, ensure the disarmament of Hamas and the retreat of Israeli troops.
Mladenov has been chosen after a long career working in foreign affairs and with solid experience in the Middle East. He worked at the United Nations as its top envoy for Iraq between 2013 and 2015, and later served as the UN’s top diplomat for the entire Middle East region. During those years, he was already actively involved in cooling off tension between Israel and Hamas. His efforts earned him, in 2021, the Grand Star of the Order of Jerusalem, awarded by the Palestinian president to prominent figures in recognition of their service to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
According to former Bulgarian diplomat Milen Keremedchiev, his appointment is also due to his nationality. Speaking to the Associated Press, Keremedchiev said, “Bulgaria has long been perceived as a moderate country, one that has avoided extremes in this particularly acute conflict.”
Mladenov was at the forefront of such an approach when he served as the country’s foreign minister from 2010 to 2013, an intense period that coincided with protests across the Middle East that became known as the Arab Spring. Mladenov successfully hosted the first-ever meeting of Syrian opposition groups in 2012, at the beginning of what would later become the Syrian Civil War against the regime of Bashar Assad.
Before he was appointed foreign minister, Mladenov in the late 1990s founded the European Institute in Sofia, became a member of the Bulgarian parliament in 2001 with the centre-right Union of Democratic Forces, and in 2007 was elected to the European Parliament, before coming back to Bulgaria first as defence minister and then as foreign minister. Currently, the 53-year-old lives in the United Arab Emirates, where he runs the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy.
