What is the Peace Board and how does it work?

In October 2025, following the announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas, Donald Trump announced a “comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict“The Peace Board was part of one of the 21 points included in that proposal.

The initiative was officially presented in January of this year during the Davos summit. There, the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, maintained that the junta would be in charge of guaranteeing compliance with the plan for peace in Gaza, but that it would also “could serve as an example of what is possible in other parts of the world”.

Trump himself justified the creation of the board by stating that “the United Nations never helped me” and even went so far as to maintain that this mechanism “could” replace the UN.

The countries of the European Union distanced themselves from the forum, which gave broad prominence to Washington’s historical allies in the Middle East, Trump’s ideological partners and small countries interested in strengthening ties with the Republican president.

Two South American presidents, the Argentine Javier Milei and the Paraguayan Santiago Peña, publicly supported the initiative.

However, enthusiasm began to fade when it became known that a permanent seat on the board cost $1 billion, an amount that would be managed exclusively by Trump.

The prominence of the American president within the structure was particularly broad: Trump was designated president for life, with the ability to appoint successors, invite or exclude members, and renew or expel members of different internal bodies.

Various critics have pointed out that the institution is more like “a paying club dominated by Trump” than to a real mechanism aimed at Gaza. Even Amnesty International stated that “The Peace Board is a plan for Gaza, but without the Gazans”.

So far, of the nearly 60 countries invited to join the initiative, some 35 have agreed to participate, while others have rejected the invitation or continue to evaluate their incorporation. Canada, for example, was later excluded from the mechanism.

A paralyzed meeting

According to the FT, the only financial contributions known to have materialized are the 20 million dollars contributed by the United Arab Emirates and another 3 million from Moroccowhich have served to create the office of the “high representative” for post-war Gaza, Nickolay Mladenov, as well as to finance the salaries of the Palestinians who make up the technocratic committee created by the junta to administer the enclave.

Emirates also contributed 100 million dollars to create a new police force in Gazabut the training program has not even started and the project remains “frozen“, according to the newspaper. Similarly, the US State Department has committed $1.2 billion in projects for Gaza, but they have not reached their recipients either.

Five months have passed since its announcement and the Peace Board continues without taking off. Representatives of the Trump Administration have let the US Congress know that the junta You will not be able to use the funds until you are certain that sufficient control mechanisms are in placewhich have not yet been implemented.

A spokesman for the board was more explicit in his reasons and attributed “a big part of why we are not operating in Gaza” to the fact that the Palestinian movement Hamas has yet to disarmaccording to statements collected by the aforementioned media.

However, Hamas has conditioned the relinquishment of power and the surrender of its weapons on the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, and refuses to disband as long as the occupation continues. Instead, Netanyahu appears determined to continue expanding Israeli control over the Strip.

Does reconstruction have a future?

For Alonso Cárdenas, internationalist and professor at the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University (UARM), the paralysis of the Peace Board does not respond only to administrative or financial problems, but also to a geopolitical context that has deteriorated since its launch.

“The project was born very weak. It was more of an advertisement. grandiloquent than a structure that could really work“, maintains the specialist. In his opinion, the regional escalation derived from the war with Iran ended up relegating the reconstruction of Gaza to a background within the priorities of Washington and its allies.

The specialist also points out that the future of the initiative is also conditioned by US internal politics. As he explains, the growing economic cost of the confrontation with Iran and the political exhaustion that Trump faces in the face of the legislative elections November reduce the margin to promote new disbursements abroad.

“Congress has been a bit reticent. Public opinion also questions continuing to allocate resources to conflicts in the Middle East in a context of internal economic difficulties.”, he states.

Cárdenas also believes that the expansion of Israeli military operations hinders any prospect of reconstruction. “Not only has there not been a withdrawal of Israel from the Strip, but there has been expanded to other territories. As long as this situation is not resolved, it is very difficult for this project to materialize.”, he states.

For the internationalist, the situation is even more complicated because Gaza is no longer at the center of the international agenda. “The focus is no longer on Gaza, but that does not mean that atrocities and human rights violations do not continue to be committed.”, he warns.

In his opinion, the outcome of the war with Iran could end up being decisive for the future of the Palestinian enclave, due to the influence that Tehran maintains over groups allies in the region.

The analyst adds that the initiative depends largely on Donald Trump’s permanence in power. “It is a personal project. When Trump leaves the presidency, it is very likely that he will also fall apart“, he points out, recalling how the Republican promoted the project with a video created with artificial intelligence and of a burlesque nature in which he saw a city in the style of Dubai or Singapore and a gold statue of him, while what “lives there is a terrible monstrosity.”