Washington: In November, US President Donald Trump was hosting a lavish dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman when he casually mentioned his grander plans for a fledgling “Board of Peace”. “It’s covering Gaza, but it’ll end up covering large portions of the world,” he told his White House audience.
What was, to that point, a vehicle to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza after two years of Israeli bombardment in its war against Hamas, and perhaps to try to forge peace between Israelis and Palestinians, was quickly transforming into something broader and more nebulous.
By the time this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos rolled around, many were speculating the US president wanted the Board of Peace to replace the United Nations. “It might,” he said before he left Washington, complaining that the UN had not helped with any of the eight wars he claims to have ended. “[But] I believe you’ve got to let the UN continue because the potential is so great.”
In Davos, Trump’s envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, was also bullish on the board’s remit. “We have created a sense of hope for what the future can bring in Gaza, and all other places where the Board of Peace will operate,” he said.
The signing ceremony also unveiled the Board of Peace logo, which bears a close resemblance to the UN’s logo, except that the map is edited to show only the Americas, it is coloured gold, and it is set in a golden laurel wreath.
What, then, are Trump’s actual plans? And where does this leave the imperative tasks of bringing about dignity for the people of Gaza and security for Israelis and Palestinians?
Who’s in, and who’s missing?
The 18 men and one woman who joined Trump on stage to inaugurate the board in Davos hardly represented a roll call of major world leaders. Among them were Argentina’s President Javier Milei, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto and the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Azerbaijan.
Absent were major world powers, Western democratic countries, Israel and the Palestinian Authority – although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, has indicated he will join, as will Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year.
“A great group of people,” Trump enthused from the podium in Davos. “Every one of them’s a friend of mine … I like every single one of them.”
The board could be “one of the most consequential bodies ever created”, he said. Once it was fully formed, “we can do pretty much whatever we want to do”, but it would work with the UN rather than trying to replace it. Comically, Trump also claimed that he was honoured to have been asked to chair the board.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would consider Trump’s invitation for Australia to join the group, but it was not a priority given legislative matters following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, who stunned Davos by calling time on the rules-based international order and American hegemony, also raised doubts about the Board of Peace.
“We need to work on the actual structure,” Carney said, arguing it would be better designed to solve the immediate problems in Gaza, rather than its seemingly global mandate. (On Friday, Trump withdrew the invitation for Canada to join.)
Richard Haass, president emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN the board was a “pretty ragtag” bunch. “The mission of this outfit is a little bit suspect,” he said. “They want to move beyond Gaza, but it’s not like they’ve succeeded in Gaza.”
The grunt work of the organisation is likely to be overseen by its executive, which the White House unveiled last week. It comprises US Secretary of State Marco Rubio (whose résumé continues to expand), Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Witkoff, former British prime minister Tony Blair, World Bank president Ajay Banga, billionaire asset manager Marc Rowan and Trump’s deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel.
Trump has also appointed to the board two senior advisers: Aryeh Lightstone, who previously advised Trump’s first-term ambassador to Israel, and Josh Gruenbaum, a former director of private equity firm KKR whom Trump tapped for a key role in the US General Services Administration.
Sarah Yerkes, a senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says there are a few positive signs – the inclusion of Banga, a serious figure in global finance, and investment gurus, given the amount of money that will be required to rebuild Gaza.
But there are no Israelis or Palestinians on the executive itself, nor diplomats or people with deep experience in the region. Blair’s inclusion is “ridiculous”, Yerkes says. “He’s kind of a joke. There’s a lot of people out there that have the credentials of a Tony Blair who have actually worked on the conflict and could come in.”
The fact Israel is not yet participating in the board at large should be a “massive red flag”, she says. “They are setting themselves up for failure.”
New plans for Gaza
In Davos, Kushner unveiled a more detailed version of Trump’s plans for Gaza. A new “master plan” involves progressively rebuilding the territory, starting with Rafah in the south in phase 1A, and working north to Gaza City in phase 4.
The plan shows “New Gaza” occupied by rebuilt cities, residential areas, industrial zones with data centres and “advanced manufacturing”, a seaport, an airport and a narrow strip of high-rise towers on the coast – which Trump has previously called a potential “Riviera of the Middle East”.
Meanwhile, a slide promoting “New Rafah” promised 100,000 homes, 200 education centres, 180 cultural and religious centres and 75 medical facilities.
“In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, ‘Let’s build a free zone, and then we’ll have a Hamas zone’,” Kushner told the audience.
“Then we said, ‘You know what, let’s just plan for catastrophic success’. Hamas signed a deal to demilitarise, that’s what we’re going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is – we do not have a plan B.”
The PowerPoint presentation suggested Gaza would have a gross domestic product of $US10 billion ($14.6 billion) by 2035, and an average annual household income of $US13,000. It would attract $US25 billion of investment in utilities and public services alone, creating more than 500,000 jobs in construction, agriculture, services and the digital economy.
“In the Middle East, they built cities like this in three years,” Kushner said. “Stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.”
Yerkes says the entire presentation was naive and reflected Kushner and Witkoff’s lack of political and diplomatic experience.
Give peace a chance
That is not to say Yerkes holds out no hope for Trump’s endeavour. She and two colleagues at the Washington-based think tank published an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine on Thursday arguing against fatalism and pointing out that the US has succeeded in some Middle East peace negotiations in years gone by.
They pointed to the 1979 Camp David Accords that brokered peace between Egypt and Israel, and the 1994 agreement between Jordan and Israel. Trump has also had success of his own with the Abraham Accords to normalise ties between Israel and several Arab nations.
Yerkes says that for the Board of Peace to work in Gaza, it must involve the directly affected parties, and it will have to attract Trump’s sustained attention.
“That does matter,” she says. “We’ve seen in past examples that you really do need to have the highest level of the US involved. We need to have our eyes open to the fact that he is unlikely to personally invest the time and energy. Kushner is not even a part of the US government and Witkoff has 20 different titles. As does Rubio.”
The rest of the developed world – countries such as Australia – need not formally join the Board of Peace for it to succeed in Gaza, says Yerkes, but they will need to be part of the process via the UN or another mechanism.
Yerkes says the board’s focus on financial investment and economic development ignores the vast amount of political work that still must happen to prepare the Israeli and Palestinian public, including in the West Bank, for long-term peace; to coax these warring societies into somehow accepting each other. “That’s a very important diplomatic task that doesn’t seem to even be on the table.”
Ultimately, the UN is not a viable peacemaking body, Yerkes says, even if it can play a key role in monitoring peace. The Board of Peace concept – a forum where global powers and world leaders sit together and oversee long-term planning – might be better placed, but it requires the key actors to be involved.
“I’m all for creativity and thinking out of the box, but that has to be based on reality. The fact that they’re shunning any sort of real experience makes this unlikely to succeed.”
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