Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is populated by a rogues’ gallery and operates under an opaque, unaccountable governance structure. But it has important work to do.
The Board of Peace is here to stay
Binyamin Netanyahu’s office announced early this morning that Israel will open the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt as soon as searches for the last remaining Israeli hostage Ran Gvili are concluded. The opening is conditional on Hamas making a “100 per cent effort” to find Gvili’s body but – importantly – not on it being found.
The decision follows a visit to Israel on Saturday night by United States envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who were reported to have grown impatient with Netanyahu’s foot-dragging. The Rafah crossing will at first only be open for the transit of people, heavily controlled by Israel, but its opening is an essential step towards starting the work of Gaza’s new, technocratic government under the supervision of the Board of Peace.
When Trump launched the board at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, most of the United States’s western allies stayed away, partly because Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko were invited to join. But more alarming than the guest list was the board’s charter, which names Trump as its chairman, adding that “he shall separately serve as inaugural representative of the United States of America”.
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Trump cannot be fired except for incapacity by a unanimous vote of the executive board and he will designate his own successor, who will take over even if he is forced out. States will join the board for three years but a donation of $1 billion can buy them a permanent seat.
“The Board of Peace is an international organization that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict,” the charter says.
The charter does not mention Gaza but when the UN Security Council endorsed Trump’s 20-point peace plan last November, it also authorised the Board of Peace to take control of the Strip following last October’s ceasefire. The board will oversee the restoration of aid and the demilitarisation of Gaza and it has UN authorisation to establish an armed international stabilisation force to enforce its plan.
Much of the board’s work in Gaza will be done by its executive board and its high representative for the Strip, former Bulgarian foreign minister Nickolay Mladenov. He is trying to persuade Israel to dramatically expand the types of aid and other materials that are admitted into Gaza so that the material conditions of the people there will improve.
This is essential if the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a Palestinian-led technocratic quasi-government, is to secure popular acceptance. Hamas has accepted the transfer of all administrative responsibilities to NCAG despite the fact that Israel, which has killed almost 500 people in Gaza since the declaration of the ceasefire, has been allowed to vet all the committee’s members.
The UN Security Council authorised the Board of Peace to run Gaza until the end of 2027 and requested that it provides a written report to the council every six months. The board’s charter does not mention the UN at all.
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