Trump’s Board of Peace and what it could mean for Palestine’s future

When international initiatives on Palestine are unveiled in places like Davos, they arrive wrapped in the language of inevitability. 

Peace is framed as a technical challenge, solvable by panels, frameworks and carefully managed consensus. 

The ‘Board of Peace’ launched this week at the World Economic Forum is the latest attempt to impose momentum on a conflict that has outlasted generations.

For Palestinians, such moments are not new. They are familiar episodes in a long history of externally designed “solutions” — many of which promised statehood, stability or prosperity, yet delivered prolonged occupation, fragmented sovereignty and the management of injustice rather than its resolution. 

Any serious assessment of the Board of Peace must therefore begin not with its aspirations, but with the political record it inherits.

US President Donald Trump launched the Board of Peace as a body intended to resolve international conflicts, with a reported $1 billion price tag for permanent membership. 

The board was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, yet a draft of its charter does not appear to limit its role to Palestinian territory. 

A senior White House official has said that around 35 countries – including Türkiye – have so far committed to joining, out of roughly 50 invitations sent.

These details matter. They clarify that the Board of Peace is not merely a humanitarian mechanism focused narrowly on Gaza, but an emerging political structure with broader ambitions and a membership shaped by power, access and alignment. 

Peace by peace

Peace processes are never neutral. They reflect the balance of power and political priorities present at their creation, and this one is no exception.

The composition of the board deepens this concern. Among the states reported to be participating are Israel and several key US allies in the Middle East, alongside other governments with close political ties to Washington. 

Israel’s participation is particularly consequential. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whose government presided over the devastating destruction of Gaza — is positioned as part of a board ostensibly tasked with shaping peace and reconstruction. 

This does not invalidate the initiative outright, but it underscores a central tension that has long plagued diplomatic efforts on Palestine: whether peace is being approached as a process grounded in accountability and rights, or as a forum for stabilising power without reckoning with responsibility.

This tension helps explain why Palestinian scepticism towards new diplomatic frameworks is not an ideological reflex, but a lived political experience. 

From Oslo onwards, peace initiatives have often prioritised security coordination, economic management and interim arrangements, while deferring or diluting the core issues that define the conflict: occupation, sovereignty, borders, refugees and equality before the law. 

The result was not peace, but a deepening asymmetry that entrenched Israeli occupation while hollowing out the promise of a viable Palestinian state.

The risk with the Board of Peace is therefore not simply that it could fail. It is that it might succeed in reframing the conflict in ways that lower expectations. 

Reconstruction without sovereignty, aid without rights, and stability without justice are all familiar outcomes of past processes. 

A board that treats Gaza primarily as a technical rebuilding challenge, rather than as part of a wider political struggle for self-determination, risks repeating this pattern.

Trump’s vision of a rebuilt Gaza – filled with glitzy high-rises and palm-lined waterfronts – is a mockery of the sufferings endured by Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years, their homeland reduced to a dystopian landscape by Israel’s war machine.

But at the same time, it would be inaccurate — and strategically unwise — to dismiss the Board of Peace as irrelevant. 

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan put the issue in perspective when he described the Board of Peace as a "historic opportunity" to end the long-standing suffering of Palestinians.

His views merely reflect the optimism of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - one of the most vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause – that all initiatives aimed at establishing peace in Gaza are important.  

Initiatives of this scale shape diplomatic discourse, influence international expectations and create reference points that can either advance or undermine Palestinian claims. 

Whether Palestinians welcome it or not, such a body will affect how governments, media and institutions talk about “solutions” in the months ahead.

It is in this sense — and only in this sense — that the Board of Peace can be described as a unique opportunity despite its inherent flaws. 

Not because its structure guarantees a just outcome, but because moments of concentrated international attention force choices that are otherwise postponed. 

They compel states and institutions to clarify what they are prepared to defend, and what they are willing to trade away.

Now or never

For this opportunity to be meaningful, however, certain principles cannot remain implicit or aspirational. International law must be treated as a binding framework, not a rhetorical reference. 

Palestinian self-determination cannot be indefinitely deferred in favour of economic incentives or security arrangements. 

Occupation must be named as the central obstacle to peace, not obscured by abstract language about “cycles of violence” or “mutual mistrust”.

Crucially, Palestinian agency must be substantive rather than symbolic. Too many previous initiatives included Palestinians in form while excluding the substance of their political demands. 

A process that seeks legitimacy without equality will not produce stability, let alone reconciliation.

The role of the wider international community — particularly the Muslim world — is therefore decisive. Participation in such a board cannot be reduced to endorsement or optics. 

If states choose to engage, they must do so with clear red lines: Palestinian statehood cannot be optional; timelines cannot be endlessly elastic; reconstruction cannot be severed from political rights. 

Engagement without leverage risks legitimising outcomes that merely manage the conflict rather than resolve it.

There is also a broader danger that initiatives like the Board of Peace become vehicles for normalisation without resolution. 

Regional cooperation and diplomatic integration may advance, while the Palestinian question remains structurally unresolved. 

This approach has been tried before, and its consequences are visible: recurring violence, deepening inequality and the erosion of faith in political solutions altogether.

Peace is not produced by panels alone. It is not generated by elite consensus or institutional design if these are disconnected from justice on the ground. 

It emerges when power is constrained by law, when rights are treated as foundational rather than negotiable, and when those most affected by the conflict are not asked to trade their future for temporary calm.

The Board of Peace will therefore be judged not by the prominence of its sponsors or the scale of its ambition, but by a simpler test: does it confront the realities of occupation and inequality, or does it seek to manage them? 

If it can do that, it may indeed represent a rare opportunity to break with decades of failed approaches. 

The choice does not belong to Palestinians alone. It belongs to the international community that continues to shape — and often shield — the conditions under which this conflict persists.