Trump’s ambitious Board of Peace faces an immediate test: Gaza
United Nations Security Council, step aside. Make way for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.
The US president’s version of international conflict resolution holds its inaugural meeting Thursday in Washington. Among its goals: to present to the world a personalized brand of post-war peacemaking and reconstruction that envisions nothing less than becoming the new standard for such endeavors.
Apparently, the Peace Council is meeting to address Phase 2 of Mr. Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan. And the council – a group of 26 largely Arab and Muslim countries hoping to influence the path forward in Gaza – is set to unveil what Mr Trump says is already $5 billion in commitments for rebuilding the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.
Why we wrote this
President Donald Trump’s Peace Council is meeting amid doubts about this diplomatic approach. Muslim and Arab countries, hoping to influence the path forward for Gaza, signed on. Western democracies, concerned about a further weakening of international institutions, are staying away.
Also on the agenda: humanitarian aid to the territory’s 2 million Palestinians, most of whom live precariously in tents and bombed-out structures; governance during a period of transition; and the thorny issue of disarming Hamas.
However, the global perception of Mr. Trump’s broader ambitions for his Peace Council, ranging from distrust to outright hostility, will weigh on the meeting.
Most of the United States’ traditional partners in international security and post-conflict reconstruction operations stay away from the board, which they view as a presidential vanity project that reflects a contempt for established institutions, including the United Nations.
Mr. Trump has done little to allay these concerns, saying at the board signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, last month that the new peace and security institution “may” actually end up supplanting the U.N. Security Council.
Most recently, the president said on social media that his new board “will prove to be the most important international body in history.”
“Do not replace the UN”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio voiced widespread concerns about the board’s ambitions during a congressional hearing last month — while echoing the Trump administration’s contempt for international institutions in general and the UN in particular.
“This is not a replacement for the UN,” Mr. Rubio told senators, before adding, “but the UN has served very little purpose in the case of Gaza, other than food aid.”
Yet, some analysts say, Mr. Trump has good reason to bypass the United Nations and other international organizations in his attempt to bring peace to the planet’s most intractable conflicts.
“We hear all the criticism that Trump is getting rid of the old international order, but I don’t believe there ever was an international order. Look at the U.N.’s record on conflict resolution,” says Brenda Shaffer, a professor specializing in Middle East politics and U.S. security strategy at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Under President Trump, she says, the United States is finally seeking alternatives to an international system that it has largely financed but which has rarely acted in its interests.
“The United States is by far the largest donor to the UN,” says Professor Shaffer, “but it has a very anti-American bias in return, not to mention an even stronger anti-Israeli bias.” The Board of Peace, on the other hand, “will be very Trumpian in that the United States will not pay for it but will nevertheless have enormous influence.”
To join the Peace Council, countries must be invited by President Trump, the council’s permanent chairman. Countries seeking permanent membership must contribute $1 billion, while others can avoid the high fee by agreeing to a three-year term.
Fewer than half of the 62 countries Mr. Trump invited to join the new board have chosen to do so.
Why America’s Allies Disagree
Yet even as some executives have criticized the “pay-to-play” membership rules, many analysts say the reasons so many U.S. allies have stayed away from the board go far beyond financial concerns.
“There is clearly a strong underlying unease about the board’s broader plan,” says Michael Hanna, director of the U.S. program at the International Crisis Group in New York. “Most of the United States’ closest allies have real reservations about efforts to extend the mandate beyond Gaza and what they see as an attack on the multilateral system,” he adds. “All this creates an aura around [the board] which they are not at all willing to adhere to.
As an example of what many U.S. partners fear is the board overreaching, President Trump said this week’s meeting would focus on a Sudan peace plan that aims to end one of the world’s most horrific wars with a permanent ceasefire by early March.
Mr Hanna notes that although the Peace Council was granted a two-year mandate from the UN Security Council to deal with Gaza – notably with China and Russia abstaining from the vote – reluctance was already evident among traditional US allies.
The failure of British and French efforts to amend the resolution to allay some of the unease about the board “helps explain why neither they nor other Western allies signed on,” he said.
NATO allies Italy and Romania said they would attend the inaugural meeting as observers, while Hungary – which Secretary Rubio visited this week – joined the board.
Other critics have been more vocal about the board, calling it a “coalition of authoritarians.” Human Rights Watch, the international human rights watchdog, called the board “a gallery of rogue leaders and governments whose human rights record ranges from questionable to appalling.”
Growing concerns in the Middle East that the United States, Israel and Iran are heading toward a resumption of military conflict, despite U.S.-Iran negotiations, are not clearly on the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting.
Yet no matter how much time the board spends on Sudan and other conflicts, the main focus Thursday remains on Gaza. Even then, many analysts have low expectations for what the board can accomplish.
Under Trump’s 20-point plan, “things have improved on the ground, but only slightly compared to truly horrible conditions,” Hanna says. “Basically, the war has slowed down,” he adds, “but it is not over. »
More than 600 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since the October 2025 ceasefire. Members of the new technocratic Palestinian agency that the Peace Council created to administer humanitarian aid and provide social services remain stuck in Egypt, unable to gain approval from Israel to enter Gaza.
The board will need to show that it can somehow iron out the sharp differences between opposing members like Israel and Qatar, a major financier of Hamas.
Managing the non-negotiables
But probably the thorniest issue the council will attempt to resolve is the disarmament of Hamas.
“Trump’s approach is that everything can be exchanged,” which worked in Phase 1 of the Gaza ceasefire, “because both sides were mature enough for it,” says Dan Rothem, a Tel Aviv-based senior policy analyst at the Israel Policy Forum think tank, which supports a two-state solution. “But now, moving into Phase 2, the president faces non-negotiables regarding both Israel and Hamas. »
Mr. Trump is demanding concessions “that Israel considers to fall short of its security needs,” Mr. Rothem says, while for Hamas, “the sole demand for disarmament conflicts with the fundamental identity of the movement.”
Professor Shaffer of the Naval Postgraduate School says she has little hope for the board’s success in Gaza, in part because members like Indonesia that have committed to providing troops for a stabilization force appear unlikely to take a tough stance toward Hamas.
“It’s very problematic, especially for Israel, when countries that might contribute troops seem neither willing nor able to disarm Hamas,” she said. “And it is difficult to imagine any stability in Gaza if Hamas remains the most powerful force there.”
At the same time, Hanna says few countries are likely to join the new board if they decide its activities represent “little more than a step before Israel resumes war.”
He says President Trump is the only leader who has the leverage with Israel to take steps that could enable progress in Gaza and prevent a return to fighting – including allowing entry to members of the planned technocratic Palestinian government agency.
“Trump has some leverage with Israel,” Mr. Hanna said. “The question now is whether he is ready to use it.”
