Trump's 'Board of Peace' proposal met with skepticism, caution amid shaky Gaza ceasefire

overwinter hasn’t been sort to Gaza. Freezing rain down has lashed the coast, and brisk up mediterranean sea winds have blown down tents that house many of Gaza’s population of close to two million homeless Palestinians.

There is neither peace nor reconstruction.

The two-year war eased with a ceasefire three months ago, but the fighting has not entirely ceased. More than 450 people have been killed since then in Israeli airstrikes and gun battles with Hamas militants, according to local health officials.

Each side blames the other, trapping civilians like Mustafa Abu Jabeh in the middle.

“It’s been a tsunami. Our world’s been turned upside down,” he said.

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“For things to get better, we need a new government that will co-operate with Israel.”

That is the promise of the second phase of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, to help it transition “from conflict to peace and development.” It’s an ambitious sequel to a shaky first phase, which saw Hamas release 20 living hostages and all but one body of the dead.

But it has also seen many violations, including continued Israeli restrictions on aid imports to Gaza and on the work of NGOs and United Nations agencies.

And now the process itself is becoming increasingly controversial.

Trump has asked 60 world leaders to sit on his "Board of Peace," pitching a “bold new approach to resolving global conflict” in invitation letters.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has accepted, though on Sunday in Doha, Qatar, he said his officials hadn’t gone through “all the details of the structure, how it’s going to work, what the financing is for, etcetera.” Other leaders were similarly cautious.

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“Canada wants money to have maximum impact,” Carney told reporters. “We still do not have unimpeded humanitarian aid flows at scale to the people of Gaza.” He called that a “precondition for moving forward on this."

Other countries have expressed concern about a charter attached to the Board of Peace, one that seems to see Gaza as the first of many conflicts this body would try to resolve, potentially sidelining the United Nations.

The charter described by Trump says there is a “need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body,” slamming “institutions that have too often failed.”

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Aside from the top-level Board of Peace, Trump has appointed various politicians, diplomats and billionaires to two executive committees whose job it will be to guide the Gaza process. That includes officials from Turkey and Qatar, drawing complaints from Israel, which sees these countries as too critical of its military moves in Gaza and too sympathetic to Hamas.

But the real work is to be done by a team of 15 Palestinian technocrats, unaffiliated with Hamas and screened by Israel’s Mossad spy agency, who have been picked to take over daily operations from the Hamas government — this after 19 years of rule by the militant group and five wars with Israel.

As chair of the new National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, Ali Shaath has grand plans to dig Gaza out of some 68 million tonnes of war rubble within three years.

“If I brought bulldozers and pushed the rubble into the sea and made new islands, I can win new land for Gaza,” said the civil engineer and former official in the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Before that can happen, though, much needs to be done — and not just a change in Israel’s policy of restricting bulldozers and other heavy equipment from entering Gaza. Even metal poles for tents have been kept out because Israel says Hamas could use them for weapons.

Under the ceasefire plan, Hamas needs to disarm and hand over power.

A Palestinian American academic and activist who has acted as a backchannel mediator between Hamas and the U.S. Government said there is reluctance inside the militant group, based on distrust of Israel.

“Hamas is saying, ‘Let's say we demilitarize, who's going to guarantee our safety?’” Bishara Bahbah said. “Why would they disarm if Israel is going to go after them again? There is no incentive.”

The ceasefire plan’s expectations also remain vague, without a list of which weapons need to be handed over (rockets and other heavy armaments or lighter handguns as well?) and without a timetable.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemed to dismiss the jump to a second phase as largely symbolic, and he called establishment of the technocratic committee a "declarative move.” Israel has resisted moving beyond the first phase until the body of the last hostage is found and returned by Hamas.

What happens if Hamas doesn’t disarm?

Last month, Trump said “there will be hell to pay.” But forcing the issue is complicated, as Israel found through two years of fighting, which failed to defeat the group entirely.

The job of disarmament is to be handed to a new international peacekeeping force envisioned in the second phase. Under a UN Security Council mandate, thousands of soldiers from various countries are to be sent into Gaza to secure a buffer zone with Israel, maintain security and train a civilian Palestinian police force.

But the mandate has been criticized as “vague and unclear” by such countries as China, who also worry that the force won’t be under the control of the UN but under the U.S.-led Board of Peace.

The challenge is scaring away the most powerful military forces in the world.

“Confronting Hamas and forcing them to lay down their arms. I mean, I'm not aware of any country able and willing to do that,” said foreign policy expert Emmanuel Navon, CEO of the think-tank Em2C and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University.

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Indeed, no state has formally signed up. Egypt, Jordan and Azerbaijan considered it but decided to stay away, the president of Azerbaijan suggesting there was no peace to keep, not yet.

Turkey has volunteered, but Israel sees President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as too close to Hamas.

“Turkey would come in to prop them up, not disarm Hamas,” Navon said.

All of this uncertainty has left reconstruction funds in limbo. The World Bank estimates that $70 billion US will be needed, with the United States, the European Union and oil-rich Gulf states promising to be major donors.

Canada “stands ready” with an unspecified amount to “support the restoration of essential services, particularly the health sector, once conditions allow.”

But countries are not yet ready to sign cheques. A Cairo conference to raise money for Gaza reconstruction, originally planned for November, has been postponed indefinitely because of continued fighting.

The United Arab Emirates is looking for more “political clarity on where this is going” and more certainty on the ceasefire’s call for an eventual Palestinian state, said a diplomatic adviser to the president in Abu Dhabi.

Despite signing on to the ceasefire’s conditions, Netanyahu has since declared “there will be no Palestinian state.”

That fits the prevailing political tone in Israel, sharpened since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, which saw some 1,200 Israelis killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Israel’s offensive in Gaza has led to the deaths of more than 71,000 Palestinians, health officials in Gaza say, including more than 450 since the ceasefire deal was reached in October.

Netanyahu and his hard-right coalition have no appetite for conciliation over Gaza, especially now that all of Israel’s living hostages have been released. But with Trump’s own name on this ceasefire agreement, he has the final word here.

“The prime minister [Netanyahu] can try and convince him, try to argue behind closed doors, but he will do exactly as the president is telling him,” said Nadav Eyal, a foreign policy commentator for Israel’s Channel 13 and an adjunct professor and research scholar at Columbia University in New York City.

Without an agreement on Hamas disarmament, Eyal said, the view from Israel is that this second phase “is actually saying we are willing to live with some sort of a status quo."

Senior Correspondent

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