US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace formally asked Italy to provide advisers from the police, firefighters and the carabinieri corps to help build a new security force for the Gaza Strip, according to letters seen by Bloomberg News.
The letters, sent last month to Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government, asked Rome to commit to the initiative, name a point of contact and nominate a senior officer from the carabinieri — a military police force overseen by the Ministry of Defense — to serve as the board’s deputy police program manager.
While the carabinieri have provided training to Palestinian police for years and served in European Union peace missions in the border city of Rafah in the Strip’s south, Italy’s role in Trump’s project has been tenuous.
Meloni earlier this year declined to sign the Board of Peace charter, citing constitutional constraints.
The US asked Italy to join the board’s stabilization force as a founding member, Bloomberg News reported in January, but the country has limited itself to offering police training.
Nine months after its official launch, the board has yet to deliver on the ground, with no stabilization force or Palestinian administration inside Gaza, and no reconstruction underway.
Last month, it earmarked $2.45 billion for the reconstruction of the strip, a fraction of the $71 billion the board says is needed over a decade to rebuild the war-torn territory.
A peace deal brokered in 2025 between Israel and Hamas, which the US categorizes as a terrorist organization, requires that the Palestinian group disarm, although it has yet to do so.
People familiar with the Italian government’s thinking said Rome was considering appointing a senior officer to serve as the deputy police program manager, but that questions surrounding security have complicated any decision and that no final determination has been made.
Adding to the complexities was a spat earlier this year between Trump and Meloni that temporarily strained relations between Rome and Washington, some of the people said.
Meloni is also campaigning to be re-elected as premier in next year’s general election.
The Italian government declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg and the US State Department referred questions to the Board of Peace.
One of the board’s officials said it was in “active discussions” with several governments over how they could contribute to the reconstruction of Gaza, where at least 77,000 have died since Israel launched a counteroffensive against Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack that killed at least 1,100.
Italy has “contributed in a very positive way for several years on capacity building around police forces, and we have had very positive interactions with Italian authorities on potential support for the technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza,” the official said.
