Meet the trusted diplomat tasked with turning the US-backed ceasefire into peace for Gaza

By Andrew Carey, Oren Liebermann, CNN

(CNN) — When Rumiana Bachvarova was just a short period into her new position as Bulgaria’s Ambassador to Israel, she went to see her compatriot Nickolay Mladenov in Jerusalem.

He took her to the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City.

“This small place is the cornerstone of all the conflicts here,” Mladenov told Bachvarova. “But see how beautiful it is.”

Mladenov was several years into his role as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, a position historically seen as symbolic but ineffective. Previous diplomats who held the title issued statements condemning the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and emphasizing the importance of the two-state solution. But they had little impact on an intractable conflict, largely ignored by the Israelis and unable to promote change with the Palestinians. They came and went without leaving a mark.

But Mladenov entered the role with a different perspective, able to build trusted relationships with both Israeli and Palestinian officials. The Bulgarian politician and diplomat had already been appointed his country’s defense minister at the age of 37, becoming the minister of foreign affairs a few months later, a role he held for 3 years. Before coming to Jerusalem in 2015, he was the UN’s Special Representative for Iraq and had earlier in his career been a member of the European Parliament.

Now Mladenov, 53, faces perhaps his most difficult task yet. As the newly announced High Representative for Gaza, he will act as the key link between US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” and a technocratic committee made up of Palestinian officials that’s meant to run the shattered enclave. He must turn a US-brokered 20-point-ceasefire plan lacking key details into a viable program that can rebuild Gaza, disarm Hamas, and govern two million people.

And it all has to be acceptable to the Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans for it to work.

Alongside him on the Board of Peace – though without his direct responsibilities towards the committee – will be US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, among others, the White House announced.

With little fanfare, Mladenov met last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior Palestinian officials as he prepared for the job ahead.

Mladenov declined to comment on his new role. When Witkoff announced the launch of the second phase of the ceasefire on Wednesday, Mladenov reposted his message but made no statement of his own.

But he surely knew what was coming when he made a New Year’s post on X.

“As we step into 2026, here’s hoping it becomes a year where common sense prevails, where rules are respected, facts carry more weight than slogans, and strength is measured not by reckless escalation, but by thoughtful restraint and wise choices,” he wrote.

Early impressions

When Mladenov arrived in Jerusalem just over a decade ago, he was initially struck by how irrelevant the position appeared to be, according to an interview with the New York Times, given as he was leaving the role in late 2020. But Mladenov shuttled back and forth between the key players, meeting the Israelis, the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza, and delivering his monthly report to the UN Security Council in New York, as mandated by his position.

He made few headlines during his time in Jerusalem, but behind the scenes he was active, alongside Egypt in particular, in bringing repeated escalations between Israel and Hamas to a swift end.

“It worked. Again,” he once wrote in a text message after a 24-hour flare-up was quelled.

“Everyone likes Mladenov – not only in Israel but across the Middle East. He’s managed to earn the full trust of all sides, which is extremely rare,” a senior Israeli official told CNN this week. “He speaks in a positive and constructive manner, avoids getting stuck on the negatives, and works in an orderly and transparent way with everyone and without unnecessary complications. He’s a fair player who understands the sensitivities of all parties.”

Among Palestinians, appraisals are more nuanced. Xavier Abu Eid, a political analyst who used to work with the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department as an adviser, acknowledged Mladenov’s professionalism.

“He was always seen as someone very serious, someone who knew the files very well. He was not the kind of envoy or diplomat that depended too much on advisers or people telling him what to say,” he said.

But Abu Eid also told CNN he felt Mladenov leaned into the Israeli position too much, being more concerned with Israel’s image than with human rights violations suffered by Palestinians.

“He cared about Palestinians, but he cared more about Israelis,” Abu Eid said.

Some in the diplomatic community in Jerusalem agreed, believing Mladenov overly neglected the Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity set up in the 1990s as part of international efforts to solve the conflict, and which continues to have some administrative control over parts of the West Bank.

One diplomat told CNN they felt he could have spent more time working on the moribund peace process – which would have meant engaging more with the PA – than on cultivating what came to be very good relations not only with Israel but also with Hamas, the longstanding rival of the PA and a US-designated terror organization.

A sympathetic reading of Mladenov’s choices might conclude that he devoted his energies to the more dynamic actors within his remit, but it was also the case that it suited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have the highest-ranking UN official in the region cultivate ties with Hamas at the expense of the PA. A divided Palestinian leadership served to weaken the Palestinian cause on the international stage.

But while that under-the-table approach by Israel towards Hamas came crashing down with the October 7, 2023 attacks, concern still lingers in Ramallah, the headquarters of the PA , that the new technocratic committee could be another way to divide Palestinians by creating rival centers of power.

“The Palestinian Authority as an interim authority has been there for the last 32 years, and now there is the (new) authority in Gaza … which is also an interim arrangement until the 31st of December 2027, so the issue for us, now that we have two interim authorities, is how to really link the two in order for us to achieve a two state solution,” former PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said in a voice note to CNN.

Expressions of skepticism

Many Palestinians are also skeptical of Mladenov’s ongoing ties to the United Arab Emirates, where he has been serving as the director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, focused on international relations and diplomacy. During his final months in Jerusalem with the UN, Mladenov championed the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel normalize relations with the UAE, among other nations. Palestinians viewed the 2020 peace agreement as a betrayal, bypassing their aspirations for statehood, which was supposed to be a prerequisite for Israel’s regional integration.

But the Accords’ advocates say they underscore what many see as one of Mladenov’s strengths: a willingness to embrace new approaches.

“I think he’s very practical,” said former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro. The two worked together in 2015 and 2016, where Mladenov showed his willingness to cut through red tape in order to get the job done. “He’s much less constrained by, or committed to, bureaucratic processes than he is (to) getting results. He’ll go anywhere and talk to anybody, and he’ll insist that those conversations be results-oriented,” said Shapiro, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank.

But virtually everyone with whom CNN spoke issued the same, stark warning: Mladenov’s past ability to build relationships is no guarantee of success in his new role. With no established infrastructure around him, he must immediately take on the most challenging tasks under the nascent second phase of the US-brokered agreement.

Three months after the ceasefire went into effect, Hamas has not made any move to disarm, which has helped prevent the deployment of an international security force to Gaza; concerns also remain over Israel’s true intentions toward further military withdrawal from the Strip. Mladenov must also figure out how to transition Gaza from nearly two decades of Hamas rule to the Palestinian technocratic committee under his directorship.

For its part, Hamas has welcomed the committee’s formation and said in a statement, issued by Basem Naim, a senior official, that it was ready to hand over administration of Gaza and facilitate the committee’s work.

A former senior Israeli security official expressed skepticism, however.

“I don’t expect this effort to succeed,” said the former official, who worked with Mladenov in his UN role. “He has a strong ability to build rapport. But from Israel’s perspective, it’s clear he also has close ties to Hamas, which will make it difficult for him to impose anything on them and make them give up power.”

Ultimately, it will likely be political will and key players acting in good faith that will determine Mladenov’s success in his new job, but those who know him believe that if he fails, it will not be for lack of trying.

Bachvarova, the fellow Bulgarian to whom he showed the Old City of Jerusalem, pays tribute to the emotional connection he has with others, and his firm belief in dialogue and compromise.

“He does not take the easy choices, or the easy political line,” she said. “He is a brave man.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Tal Shalev in Jerusalem and Ibrahim Dahman in Cairo contributed to this report.