Why the Second Phase of Donald Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan Is Failing

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The Iran War is just another nail in the coffin of the Trump administration’s ill-conceived peace plan for Gaza.

“What we are doing is very simple: Peace,” proclaimed President Donald Trump during the inaugural meeting of the “Board of Peace” on February 19, just nine days before he launched an unprovoked war against Iran. The effort, which stems from Trump’s broader 20-point peace plan announced on September 29, 2025, and is designed to resolve the Israel–Palestine conflict, is no small task. Amid ongoing Israeli bombardment and widespread deprivation across Gaza and across the broader Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), alongside the joint US-Israeli war against Iran, proper conceptualizations of “peace” appear further away than ever.

To be sure, Trump did acknowledge the difficulty of the situation: “It’s called the Board of Peace, and it’s all about an easy word to say, but a hard word to produce.” Indeed, not in over 75 years and 15 US presidential administrations has a true, enduring peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict been achieved. The conflict has largely hardened as a result, making serious solutions difficult to reach, let alone imagine. The new regional war is only worsening its prospects now.

Yet that is what makes Trump’s Board of Peace all the more worrisome today. Contrary to what many analysts, journalists, and politicians argue, the conflict is not complicated. Per international law, including numerous United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, International Court of Justice (ICJ)rulings, international conventions, and the UN Charter, constituting the basis of international law, Israel’s occupation of the state of Palestine is patently illegal and has been so for decades. That territory constituting the OPT includes Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The Board of Peace is not steeped in any of........

© The National Interest