As the largest donor to the Palestinians, the European Union wants to lead international efforts to rebuild Gaza. But while Brussels continues to mobilize billions of euros, its financial leverage hasn’t been matched by the political pressure needed to tackle the conflict’s underlying causes.
At Monday's Palestine Donor Group meeting in Brussels, the European Commission announced nearly €900 million in funding commitments and launched the Team Gaza Initiative, a platform bringing together international partners to coordinate the Strip's early socioeconomic recovery. The meeting brought together representatives from 65 delegations, including members of U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace.
European Commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Šuica said the initiative is intended to rally international partners behind stabilizing the West Bank and rebuilding Gaza, while the funding commitments are meant to demonstrate that political will can translate into tangible results.
"Only collective effort can help rebuild Gaza," Šuica told reporters after the meeting. "This is why we started this Team Gaza Initiative with not only the European Commission and the EU-27, but with the international community and, of course, the Board of Peace."
But for Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, financial commitments alone will not be enough.
He argues the EU has long approached the Palestinian issue largely through a technical lens, focusing on governance reforms and transparency within the Palestinian Authority What is missing, he said, is a willingness to back the financial support with greater political engagement.
"The Palestinian Authority is in such dire financial straits because of Israeli sanctions," Lovatt said. "A more effective approach would actually be for the EU, its member states, and other actors to mobilize more aggressively against these Israeli sanctions."
Funding Gaza's recovery
One of the meeting's main outcomes was the launch of the Team Gaza Initiative, which brought together more than a dozen international partners, including Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Commission, the European Investment Bank and the World Bank.
MEP Hildegard Bentele (European People's Party, DE) said the meeting sent an important signal by reaffirming financial support, backing reforms within the Palestinian Authority and improving coordination of early reconstruction efforts through Team Gaza.
But she also cautioned that success hinges on more countries stepping up.
"It is striking that, to date, the donor base remains overwhelmingly European,” Bentele said, “even though the Palestinian cause is a global issue and is strongly championed, at least rhetorically and politically, across the Arab and Muslim world."
The meeting also endorsed a first wave of early recovery projects to restore basic services, particularly water and waste management.
Under the first phase of Washington's 20-point peace plan, "full aid" would be delivered to Gaza "without interference," including the rehabilitation of water, electricity and sewage infrastructure, as well as hospitals and bakeries. While humanitarian access has improved in recent months, food shortages persist and the health care system continues to deteriorate.
Earlier this year, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said about 60% of families in Gaza lacked clean water for daily use. Sanitation conditions are equally alarming, with 86% of households reporting barriers to accessing toilets and latrines because of water shortages, lack of privacy and poor hygiene.
For MEP Villy Søvndal (Greens/EFA, DK), however, rebuilding Gaza will be difficult without greater pressure on Israel. Its military campaign and continued control over much of Gaza are only worsening the humanitarian crisis, he said.
Søvndal’s remarks came after EU foreign ministers failed on Monday to secure enough support for trade sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
"It is time for the EU to stop accepting to finance infrastructure for the Palestinians and then have Israeli settlers or military destroy it," Søvndal, Denmark's former foreign minister, said. "There needs to be consequences for Israel's ongoing breaches of international law and human rights violations."
UNRWA dispute clouds Brussels’ Gaza push
One of the clearest points of friction among the more than 60 delegations gathered in Brussels on Monday was the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza’s reconstruction.
Earlier this month, the Board of Peace declared that the agency "has no place" in the future of Gaza. A day earlier, Jeffrey Bartos, the U.S. ambassador for U.N. reform, described the agency as "a subsidiary of Hamas."
The criticism comes despite the European Union and most member states resuming funding to UNRWA after briefly suspending support in early 2024 over Israeli allegations that some agency staff participated in Hamas' October 7 attacks.
Lovatt said U.S. and Israeli efforts to delegitimize the agency have not only complicated European humanitarian policy in Palestine long before the current war, but they have also constrained EU financial support for the Palestinians.
According to MEP Bentele, however, the dispute has already eroded trust in the agency. "For any organization to play a central role in Gaza, the parties directly involved must have confidence in its ability to deliver impartially, and the relationship between UNRWA and Israel is irreparably broken."
Despite those divisions, Brussels continues to see the agency as central to humanitarian operations in Gaza. MEP Søvndal said UNRWA "has played and shall continue to play an essential role in Gaza — until there is a legitimate Palestinian government that can take over."
UNRWA Commissioner-General ad interim Christian Saunders used Monday's meeting to reaffirm the agency's role in providing essential public services and humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
In a written statement to The Parliament, he said he had met with several EU commissioners and senior officials, adding that the U.S. Board of Peace had also recognized UNRWA's role.
"UNRWA has immense capacities on the ground in Gaza and stands ready to support these early recovery efforts and the Board of Peace and the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), wherever we can be helpful," he said.
Yet the EU and U.N. approach remains "almost diametrically opposed" to that of the Board of Peace, according to Martin Konečný, director of the European Middle East Project.
While the EU and U.N. model is grounded in decades of experience operating in conflict zones, he said, the Board of Peace's vision of a rebuilt Gaza filled with gleaming skyscrapers has so far produced few concrete humanitarian results. He warned the U.S.-led approach could keep Gaza uninhabitable for years and facilitate pressure for mass displacement of Palestinians from the Strip.
Still, he argued that Trump's leverage over Israel remains indispensable and described the EU's decision to engage with the Board of Peace in its aid efforts as "a sensible move, as long as the EU keeps full control over its funding and adheres to its established humanitarian principles."
The challenge now is turning political commitments and financial pledges into reconstruction on the ground.
A joint EU-U.N. Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment estimates that rebuilding the enclave will require $71.4 billion over the next decade, including $26.3 billion in the first 18 months to restore essential services.
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