The American president, , estimates at 1,000 million dollars (about 864 million euros) the price that countries must pay to acquire a permanent seat on the Peace Board, the incipient international project that the president leads with the supposed objective of achieving peace in and other territories of the planet. The White House has invited at least 60 world leaders to join an organization that Washington initially linked to the resolution of the war in the Palestinian enclave, but that takes the form of a world assembly that would have Trump as its leader with broad powers, according to a draft of the founding charter that Reuters and Bloomberg have had access to.
The document, which the United States has sent to dozens of countries that it invites to participate, details that he—that is, Trump—will have the right to decide who aspires to join the club and when and where their meetings and votes will be held. It will also have the final say on the decisions of the body, described in the draft as “an international organization that seeks to promote stability, reestablish reliable and legitimate governance, and ensure lasting peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
Several leaders have claimed to have received the invitation, such as King Abdullah of Jordan or Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. So has the Prime Minister of Italy, who has made public her intentions to join, or Mark Carney, the Canadian head of government, who will also accept, according to several media outlets in his country. The conservative Santiago Peña, president of Paraguay, has announced that his country will join the Peace Board, “which aims to act in regions affected by conflict, focusing on Gaza.”
Several European countries have received the invitation, while the American draft indicates that when three States have approved the charter, the project will officially begin. Trump detailed in a recent interview with Reuters that the Peace Board will address other conflicts once it has resolved the one in Gaza, where Israeli gunfire has killed 464 people since the beginning of October, the Gaza Health Ministry reported on Saturday.
For now, the priority is the Strip. A White House representative has told Bloomberg on condition of anonymity that countries can join the Peace Board free of charge for three years, but that their permanence in the organization will depend on Trump. If countries pay $1 billion during the first year of the project, they will be guaranteed permanent membership. That money, he added, will be used for the reconstruction of Gaza.
The so-called Peace Board gained notoriety after being mentioned in the plan that Washington devised in September to end the conflict in the Strip, and which ended up inspiring the fragile truce that governs the enclave. In that initial plan, which seeks to create a “transitional” governance model that excludes the Palestinian militia Hamas, the establishment of “a Palestinian technocratic committee” was already anticipated, in charge of the day-to-day operations of Gaza and “supervised” by this body, which would be “headed and chaired” by Trump.
The future of the truce
Implementation of that part of the plan has gained speed. On Wednesday, the Palestinian factions—including Hamas—agreed on the creation of the technocratic committee, which will be made up of Palestinians and which will be hierarchically at the lowest place in the new Gazan administration. On Thursday, Trump announced in a statement that the Peace Board had been created. The note did not detail the identity of its members, who must be heads of state, but it stated that the Board would be “the most prestigious ever formed.”
On Friday, a statement from the White House made official the formation of three other additional bodies to the Peace Board and the Palestinian committee. The most influential is the Executive Board. “Each member will oversee a key portfolio for the stabilization of Gaza,” the White House statement said. “[Incluyendo en] regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale financing and capital mobilization.”
Some members of the Executive Board will be members of the Trump Administration who are repeated in other bodies, such as the Secretary of State, the Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, or Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, real estate magnate Jared Kushner. There will also be the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the American billionaire Marc Rowan and the president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga.
Further down, and with undetailed powers, will be the Gaza Executive Board. This entity must support the work of the Office of the High Representative —Nickolay Mladenov, former United Nations special coordinator for peace in the Middle East—, which seeks to act as a bridge between the Peace Board and the technocratic committee. Unlike the two higher bodies, which do not have Palestinian or Arab participants, the Gaza Executive Board does. Among its members are the Qatari diplomat Ali al Thawadi, the head of Egyptian intelligence, Hassan Rashid, and the Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan.
Opposition and skepticism
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday protested the configuration of the Gaza Executive Board. As soon as the sabbatthe president posted a statement in Hebrew in which he assured that “the composition” of that body “has not been coordinated with Israel and is contrary to Israeli policy.” Although Netanyahu’s note did not go into details, everything seems to indicate that his objection is directed at the inclusion of a minister from Turkey, which Israel wants to prevent from being deployed on the ground in Gaza, and representatives from Qatar and Egypt, two countries that have expressed their rejection of the Israeli offensive in the Strip.
Its rejection is no exception in Israel. The far-right Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, has assured that Gaza does not need “executive boards” to supervise the construction, but rather “a massive drive for voluntary migration”, while Bezalel Smotrich, head of Finance, has accused the prime minister of not having “established a military government” in Gaza that would work to promote “the settlement” of Israelis.
First phase
The construction of the political structure is advancing regardless of the still unresolved deterioration suffered by the Palestinian enclave. The first phase of the ceasefire, which came into force on October 10, recorded progress such as the release of the 48 live and dead hostages held by Hamas (except one, who the militia claims not to have found) and the end of large-scale Israeli bombings.
However, Israel has systematically violated the terms of the truce, with daily fire incidents, the closure of the crossing with Egypt and restrictions on humanitarian flows. On Saturday, Gazan authorities reported that a new baby died from hypothermia, the eighth this winter, while UN agencies report having winter supplies blocked at the gates of Gaza.
Now, the emergence of an administration that governs Gaza without the participation of armed militias is one of the pillars of the second phase of the agreement, which must convert the temporary truce into a permanent ceasefire. However, there are doubts that it can be successful. Israel opposes completely withdrawing its soldiers from the enclave, Hamas refuses to disarm without the emergence of a Palestinian state, and it is not clear what relationship the movement of billions of dollars between the possible members of the Peace Board has with either of these two objectives.
