By Joe Nalven + Gemini

I would like to write a happy article even though the world is not a happy place. But there are bright spots that can dazzle us into thinking the world is other than it is. Or maybe if we focus on workarounds, we can find a satisfactory middle place─even if it is the Middle East.

So, I worked with AI to understand how the Board of Peace might become a workaround to that unsettled region. Initially, I was looking for a logic to describe the boundaries I studied: a squatter settlement in Cali, Colombia that wanted to formalize its boundaries within the city; the border areas in the U.S. and Mexico that wanted to solve their intermingled environmental problems. From those boundaries, I wondered if that logic could help analyze the contested borders in the Middle East.

This is an interesting outcome of my dialogue with Claude, at first, and then Gemini. I don’t expect it to explain more than the many experts who have their insights into this region and what they expect of a Board of Peace. But it did add to a way of understanding the various parties involved and what each was trying to accomplish (or obstruct).

I would be interested in your take on AI’s use of the logic of boundaries to understand this puzzle and its players.

Navigating the Peace: The Board and the Players

In the wake of the 12-Day War of June 2025, the Middle East has entered a period characterized not by the resolution of ancient grievances, but by the sophisticated management of a new kind of frontier. For decades, the global community pursued “peace” as a final, harmonious destination—a Westphalian ideal where borders were clearly drawn, recognized, and respected. Today, that ideal has been replaced by a more pragmatic, and perhaps more cynical, objective: Interface Control.

The centerpiece of this new era is the Board of Peace, a high-stakes consortium of international powers that treats the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not as a moral crisis to be settled, but as a systemic friction to be mitigated. To understand the current landscape is to recognize that the Navigators of this region—the heads of state, the board members, and the technocrats—are not seeking a “Two-State Solution” in the traditional sense. Instead, they are seeking to create a Managed Boundary: a strategic interface that is stable enough to attract massive capital investment, yet sufficiently fractured to ensure that no single entity can rise to challenge the regional status quo.

The Logic of the Managed Boundary

The traditional concept of a border is binary: you are either in or you are out. In the 2026 Middle East, however, the boundary has become a complex, multi-layered filter. The Board of Peace recognizes that a total resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is likely impossible under current ideological constraints. Therefore, the logic has shifted from solving the conflict to compartmentalizing it.

By creating a Managed Boundary, the Board effectively de-risks the region for the global network. This boundary allows for the flow of energy, technology, and capital while acting as a shield against the spillover of kinetic violence or political instability. The success of the Board is not measured in handshakes on a White House lawn, but in the stability of the “Pax Silica” markets and the uninterrupted progress of the Gaza “Riviera” reconstruction projects.

The Administrative Box: The NCAG

At the heart of this strategy is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). This technocratic body is what we might call the “Administrative Box.” In the eyes of the Board, the NCAG serves a vital function: it takes the messy, violent, and highly emotive reality of Palestinian governance and translates it into a language that the global network can process—the language of infrastructure, budgets, and urban planning.

The NCAG is designed to be a buffer ego. It provides the services of a state—potable water, electricity, sewerage, and policing—without possessing the full political agency of a state. By moving the conflict into this administrative box, the Navigators strip the various Palestinian factions of their ability to disrupt the wider region. When a dispute arises, it is no longer framed as a struggle for national liberation, but as a regulatory disagreement or an administrative delay.

This compartmentalization is the ultimate achievement of the Board. If the conflict can be reduced to a series of technical problems to be solved by the NCAG, then the political aspirations of Hamas or the Palestinian Authority can be indefinitely deferred. The conflict becomes a localized management issue, leaving the global network of the Board members free to pursue broader strategic goals.

The Navigators and Their Stakes

To see how this logic plays out in practice, we must look at the specific “Navigators” who are currently steering this interface. Each player has a different interest in maintaining the boundary’s stability, and each uses the Board as a tool to protect their own egocentric network.

Israel: The Enclosure Strategy

For Israel, the primary goal is no longer a political settlement, but the perfection of the Physical-Technological Interface. Following the 2025 war, Israel has moved toward a model of total enclosure. By utilizing autonomous sensor-to-shooter loops and AI-driven border management, Israel aims to make the boundary functionally impenetrable to threats while remaining economically permeable to the NCAG’s needs. For the Israeli Navigator, the Board of Peace is a mechanism to outsource the civilian management of Gaza to international donors, thereby shedding the legal and moral liabilities of occupation while retaining the tactical advantages of control.

The United States: The Global Architect

The U.S. approach under the Board of Peace framework is one of Strategic Arbitrage. The U.S. recognizes that its traditional role as a peace broker was often a liability. By restructuring the conflict as a corporate-strategic venture—complete with membership fees for regional allies—the U.S. has turned the Gaza boundary into a site of global investment. The goal is to bind regional actors (Israel, the Gulf, and even Turkey) into a shared economic architecture. If everyone is a stakeholder in the Riviera project, the U.S. reasons, the cost of breaking the boundary becomes too high for any one player to afford.

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf: Network Hedging

For Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, the interest is in Regional Insulation. Their primary ego is the successful realization of Vision 2030 and similar domestic projects. They view the Palestinian conflict as a noise that interferes with their signal. By participating in the Board of Peace, they are essentially buying insurance. They provide the capital for the NCAG to operate, ensuring that the Gaza boundary remains stable, which in turn protects their own internal development from the shocks of regional war. They are not navigating toward a Palestinian state; they are navigating toward a predictable neighbor.

Qatar and Turkey: The Shadow Navigators

Qatar and Turkey occupy a unique position as the Allies of the Shadow. They serve as the critical interface between the Board and the fractured Palestinian factions, particularly Hamas. Their strategy is one of Functional Integration. They know that if Hamas is entirely excluded from the Administrative Box, they will have every incentive to destroy it. Therefore, Qatar and Turkey work to ensure that Hamas is “transitioned” into the NCAG framework. They act as the mediators who convince the militants to allow the technocrats to lead, preserving the Resistance as a dormant political force while allowing the Reconstruction to proceed.

The Fractured View: Palestinian Agency in the Machine

The success of the Board of Peace relies heavily on the continued fracture of the Palestinian political landscape. If the Palestinians were to develop a single, unified ego—one that combined the administrative legitimacy of the West Bank with the kinetic defiance of Gaza—they would represent a significant challenge to the Board’s managed boundary.

However, the Navigators of the Board actively benefit from this division. By prioritizing the NCAG—a body that has no political mandate—they ensure that the Palestinian people are represented by managers rather than leaders. In this system, the West Bank remains tied to the legacy structures of the PLO, while Gaza becomes an experimental Board-managed enclave. This creates a permanent state of Administrative Disconnect, where the two halves of the Palestinian territory are navigating toward different goals on different timelines.

The Palestinian Navigator, therefore, faces a brutal choice: participate in the NCAG’s mimicry of a state to gain access to basic resources, or remain outside the box and face systemic irrelevance. The Board’s logic ensures that cooperation is the only path to survival, but that cooperation never leads to actual sovereignty.

Conclusion: The Success of Predictability

Is this Peace? In the traditional sense, no. There is no reconciliation, no healing of wounds, and no final justice. But in the words of the new regional logic, it is something perhaps more valuable to the global network: Predictability.

The Navigators have succeeded not by bringing the lion to lie down with the lamb, but by building a better fence and hiring a better manager for the pasture. By moving the conflict into the administrative box of the NCAG, they have effectively lowered the vibration of the region. The boundary is no longer a site of constant explosion; it is a site of negotiation, budgeting, and technological monitoring.

This analysis reveals the candid reality of the 2026 Middle East: the Board of Peace is an architecture of containment. It is a system designed to manage a Subaltern Population by offering them the trappings of a state (water, power, and schools) in exchange for their political silence. For the global network, the Managed Boundary is a success because it allows the world to move on, even if the people living within the boundary are still waiting for a world that includes them.

The Navigators are not heroes of a peace process; they are the engineers of a stable interface. And in a world that values the flow of data and capital above all else, stability is the only peace that truly matters.

My sense is AI has captured the technocrat’s hope and the tensions that can cause it to stumble. The essay’s use of boundaries within and without (a managed boundary) may be the more useful framework than the quickfire commentaries.

“Many in Europe say the Board of Peace is meant to substitute the U.N. It does not look to me like an attempt to replace the U.N. but if it helps shake that agonizing giant and inshallah wake it up, then God bless the Board of Peace,” said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)