Trump Board of Peace: Readings and Assessments by Western Experts and Commentators
Hamza Ali, Progress Center for Policies
Background:
U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the world is now “much richer, safer, and more peaceful than it was a year ago,” during the launch event of the Board of Peace initiative on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
At the signing ceremony, Trump described the new body established to manage the Gaza Strip as “one of the most influential bodies ever created in the history of the world.”
U.S. and Palestinian officials used the occasion to present a roadmap for the next steps in implementing the Gaza ceasefire, including placing the Strip under day-to-day administration led by a Palestinian technocratic body formed in Cairo.
For his part, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, presented a plan for the first one hundred days that includes a significant increase in aid flows and the rehabilitation of essential infrastructure—such as water, electricity, and sewage networks—as well as the reconstruction of hospitals and bakeries. Kushner also unveiled a “conceptual” map for Gaza’s future, featuring a buffer zone along the border with Israel, while preserving the territorial unity of the Strip and avoiding its current fragmentation.
Early Skepticism: Effectiveness and Implementation Gaps
In an article published on January 22, The Economist assessed the Board of Peace as a distraction from the real work required in Gaza. The magazine noted that in the three months following the entry into force of the ceasefire, only one item from the second phase had been implemented: the appointment of the “Palestinian National Committee for the Administration of Gaza” on January 14.
However, Israel did not allow the fifteen committee members to enter the devastated Strip, let alone assume administrative control, prompting The Economist to question whether the committee possessed any real authority.
The magazine emphasized that the obstacles to achieving peace remain formidable, arguing that the recent announcement of three new peace-making bodies would not be sufficient to get the process back on track. It described the executive board appointed by Trump to oversee Gaza as being dominated by individuals “more adept at identifying business opportunities than ending humanitarian crises,” noting that it includes no Palestinians. Above all, the Board of Peace itself was characterized as a “private club of world leaders.”
According to The Economist, the solution does not lie in multiplying structures and institutions, but in urgent implementation: immediately completing the second phase, allowing the Palestinian National Committee to enter Gaza and providing it with the resources needed to prepare for reconstruction, forming and deploying an international peacekeeping force, initiating a verifiable process to disarm Hamas fighters, withdrawing Israeli forces from Gaza’s agricultural lands as a prelude to full withdrawal, and allowing much larger quantities of food, medicine, and construction materials into the Strip.
From Temporary Mechanism to Executive Experiment
The Guardian argued that the Board of Peace now taking shape bears little resemblance to what many diplomats believed they had agreed to in the autumn of 2025. UN Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted in November, was initially presented as a means of granting UN legitimacy to the Trump-brokered ceasefire in Gaza, with both the negotiations and the resolution itself focused exclusively on ending the war.
Although the idea of placing Gaza under a Trump-led board for two years initially caused widespread concern, European and Arab diplomats—according to the newspaper—viewed it as an acceptable price to keep Trump focused on Gaza and prevent a return to full-scale war. What was presented as a temporary mechanism now appears, The Guardian argues, more like an experiment in executive control, with Gaza used as a first testing ground.
One analyst told the paper, in response to a question about whether the world is heading toward “a new era of corporate colonial control”: “I don’t think we are moving into something new; I think the masks are coming off. If we go back to South Africa in the nineteenth century, the major mine owners were not simply subordinates of British policy. Money, gold, and diamonds were what drove it. Today, investments in oil and billionaires are driving the scene.”
The Board as a Test of the Global Order
These critiques were echoed and expanded in analyses published on January 22 by The Washington Post and The New York Times. The Washington Post described the Board of Peace as having evolved into a test of the global order itself, quoting an analyst at the International Crisis Group who said the initiative represents “a very clear vision of international cooperation on Washington’s terms.”
The New York Times, in a more comprehensive analysis, presented the announcement of the board, its charter, and its launch event in Davos as embodying a broader clash between Trump’s vision of the world and the old international order. One commentator observed that acceptance of this new reality is growing even among European elites who had long denied it: “They are accepting that this is a new world under Trump. No one can deny it, and even Europeans who were in denial are now acknowledging it.”
Internal Fractures: The Saudi–Emirati Dimension
Beyond questions of legitimacy and effectiveness, some analysts pointed to structural fragilities within the Board of Peace itself, stemming from latent geopolitical tensions among some of the Arab participants. While outlets such as Politico focused on European concern and hesitation, one analyst—a professor at Georgetown University—highlighted unspoken fractures between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, despite their joint participation in the initiative.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE remain formal allies, but their regional strategies have increasingly diverged. Riyadh emphasizes state sovereignty, territorial unity, and stability through internationally recognized institutions. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has pursued an approach based on influence through non-state actors and flexible arrangements that tolerate fragmentation in fragile states such as Yemen, Sudan, and the Horn of Africa. This divergence weakens Gulf Cooperation Council cohesion and complicates U.S. efforts to maintain a unified, Washington-aligned regional bloc.
Relevance to the Board of Peace
The Board of Peace imports this unresolved Saudi–Emirati disagreement directly into the framework for managing Gaza. While both parties participate, their approaches to the board differ in ultimate objectives: Saudi Arabia views it as a mechanism to restore stability without creating precedents for fragmentation, whereas the UAE appears more open to security-led or hybrid governance models, including forms of external administration.
Accordingly, the board functions less as a consensus-building body and more as a U.S.-led framework to contain competition among key partners and prevent their tensions from undermining Washington’s broader regional objectives, rather than as a framework to resolve those tensions.
Conclusions
– Western commentary on the Board of Peace converges around limited enthusiasm and greater, measured skepticism. While President Trump presents the initiative as a transformative step toward regional and international stability, analysts in leading Western media and research outlets question whether the proliferation of executive structures can compensate for the hard, unfinished work on the ground in Gaza. The core concern lies not in the absence of vision, but in the absence of implementation.
– Across assessments by The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, a shared conclusion emerges: procedure has outpaced substance. Key elements of the second phase of the ceasefire remain stalled; the Palestinian technocratic administration lacks access and authority; and fundamental issues—security arrangements, disarmament, Israeli withdrawal, and large-scale humanitarian access—remain inadequately addressed.
– The Board of Peace faces the risk of becoming a high-level political and diplomatic umbrella without a corresponding executive base on the ground. Skepticism extends beyond Gaza to the initiative’s overall architecture, amid European unease, questions of legitimacy, and fears that the board represents a form of international cooperation dictated exclusively by Washington.
– Most importantly, the board imports unresolved geopolitical tensions among its sponsors—particularly the Saudi–Emirati divergence—into an already fragile governance framework, raising doubts about its capacity to generate genuine consensus rather than merely contain competing agendas.
– Taken together, these assessments suggest that the Board of Peace, at least in its current form, is closer to a mechanism for managing optics, expectations, and rivalries than to a genuine breakthrough. Without rapid progress on the core tasks of the second phase, and without clearer alignment among its principal backers, it is unlikely to produce tangible change on the ground. Peacebuilding, Western commentators repeatedly stress, remains incomplete—and largely untouched by the structures now being announced.
