Trump’s “Board of Peace”
Reveals Grim Future for Gaza
February 20, 2026—It’s said that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But sometimes, the smoke is meant to create the illusion of a fire.
Such is the case with Donald Trump’s speciously named “Board of Peace,” which met this week for the first time.
It’s a motley crew of authoritarians and Trump lapdogs, and the speeches reflected that. One leader after another offered empty platitudes and gushing, albeit fictional, praise of the U.S. President.
There is a surreal quality to Trump convening a “Board of Peace” as he muscles up for what is increasingly looking like an inevitable, and disastrous, attack on Iran and blithely declaring that he has brought “peace to the Middle East” as Israel continues to slaughter Palestinian civilians in droves.
But when we get past the theatrics and the hypocrisy, nothing about this “Board of Peace” is changing anything. Its impact in Gaza is currently zero; the conditions, the killing, and the tensions there would be identical even without this “Board of Peace.”
But it is still important to follow gatherings like what Trump convened on Thursday. Even if what was discussed is irrelevant to life on the ground for the moment, it is still illustrative of what Israel and its allies are seeking to build on the remains of the genocide. If Thursday was any indication, this augurs a very grim outlook for Gaza.
Reality intrudes on the “Board of Peace”
Much attention has rightly been paid to the fact that Trump invited both Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin to sit on the Board. Both men, of course, face charges of war crimes for which they are wanted fugitives by the International Criminal Court.
Israel agreed to join the Board just before Netanyahu met with Trump last week. Russia has yet to respond to the invitation. There is, quite pointedly, no Palestinian presence on the Board whatsoever. Indeed, this week, the Trump administration announced it had established formal two-way “communication” between the Board of Peace and the Palestinian Authority, a body that is no longer credible in the eyes of most Palestinians. So Palestinian contact, let alone input, remains minimal at best.
The current members of the Board of Peace are: Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
That’s a list of authoritarian states and leaders desperate to win Donald Trump’s favor. It’s noteworthy that just a handful of Eastern European states joined, and none, aside from Israel, are traditionally close allies of the United States.
About two dozen other states did send observers to the meeting of the Board, as did the European Union, but many of them have already made it clear they will not join (even the Pope has refused), and clearly wanted to be in the room just to get a first-hand look at what would happen there.
What happened was very little.
While the focus was technically on Gaza, almost nothing of substance came out of the meeting regarding Palestine at all. Trump said the U.S. would donate $10 billion to the Board of Peace, but he failed to specify what the money would be used for or how he intended to raise it, since Congress, not the President, controls the United States’ checkbook.
Trump also stated that Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Kuwait would be coming up with $7 billion for rebuilding Gaza.
But it’s all smoke, as the “reconstruction plan” for Gaza remains far out of reach. Israel maintains control of more than half the Strip, is launching daily, deadly attacks, and is doing all it can to prepare the ground for a new wave of full-blown genocide.
Hamas and other Palestinian factions—none of whom, the world must be reminded, ever agreed to disarm themselves—are about to submit to sacrificing their right to fight against Israel’s siege and occupation, which is guaranteed under international law.
None of the states that have pledged troops intend for those troops to confront Palestinian factions; rather, they are supposed to be a peacekeeping force, maintaining security alongside a Palestinian police force.
But that police force, which the U.S. is trying to assemble from the armed Palestinian gangs that are either employed by Israel or are simply freelance bandits, is not coming together any time soon, either.
Under those circumstances, none of Trump’s cronies are going to send either troops or funds to Gaza for his Board of Peace, no matter what they told him as they fawned over him in Washington this week.
Little relief in sight in Gaza
The Board of Peace managed to secure United Nations Security Council approval, along with Trump’s terminally flawed “20-Point Peace Plan.” That combination means that the fiction of bringing “peace” to Gaza granted the Board a certain air of legitimacy; it was sold as a means to finally end the periodic Israeli “lawn mowing” that, after October 7, morphed into a genocidal horror that horrified a normally complacent Western world.
The truth is, as I’ve noted before, Trump has much bigger aspirations for the Board of Peace. That’s why he created the so-called “Executive Board,” which will be the tool he intends to use to govern Gaza to turn it into a resort town on the Mediterranean with a reduced number of Palestinians acting as quaint “native servants” for tourists, in Trump’s and Jared Kushner’s racist vision.
The Board of Peace, as Trump hinted during his remarks on Thursday, is intended to challenge the United Nations and serve as a vehicle for Trump’s personal and family power even after he has left office.
“The Board of Peace is going to almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly,” he told the audience.
Meanwhile, Gaza remains stuck in limbo. The technocratic committee that is supposed to take over the day-to-day administration and civic responsibilities in Gaza (and represents the full extent of Palestinians’ involvement in governing their own lives) remains in Egypt, their entry into Gaza barred by Israel.
But never fear, they do have a name: the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). They even have a logo, one which is very reminiscent of that of the Palestinian Authority, so Israelis have found a reason to complain even about that.
All of this remains incidental and amounts to little more than a distraction. Israeli leaders are eager to get back to the intense violence that crushed Gaza for two years.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar represented Israel at the Board of Peace confab and made it absolutely clear that the threat of major violence is very real.
“Distinguished leaders, all previous plans for Gaza failed because they never addressed the core issues: terror, hate, incitement, and indoctrination,” he told the gathering. “At the heart of President Trump’s comprehensive plan are the disarmament of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, and deradicalization of Palestinian society there.”
Sa’ar’s words built on Netanyahu’s own threats. “Hamas will very soon face a dilemma. Lay down its weapons the easy way or the hard way,” he told an audience of Israeli soldiers on Thursday.
Meanwhile, even more extreme figures such as Knesset Member Limor Son Har-Melech of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist “Jewish Power” party, joined a rally of the radical settler group Nahala earlier this week to infiltrate Gaza—under the full protection of the Israeli army, naturally—to plant trees there in anticipation of the return of Israeli settlements.
“‘Where the Jews rule over their enemies’ is not just a verse in the Book of Esther, it is the reality we are building here on the ground. Gaza will be Jewish, because only in this way will we ensure victory and real security for the people of Israel,” she said during the ceremony.
Nahala is planning a march into Gaza over Passover, which begins on April 1. If Netanyahu gets his way, Har-Melech will be frustrated because the full-scale invasion of Gaza will have resumed by then. Perhaps it will take longer if Trump’s timetable dictates a delay. But it’s coming.
This is where the Palestinians in Gaza find themselves: trapped between the madness of the radical settlers and the expansionist dreams of the Israeli government. Genocide stares them in the face in either case, while the international community plays games to appease Donald Trump, and American weaponry flows into Israel while its warships prepare to decimate Iran.
The “Board of Peace” isn’t even relevant enough to this reality to be a joke.
—Mondoweiss, February 20, 2026
https://mondoweiss.net/2026/02/trumps-board-of-peace-reveals-grim-future-the-u-s-and-israel-have-