Four months after its formation, US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace convened its first official meeting in Washington, D.C. on February 17.

It went reasonably well, but serious problems lie ahead.

Trump, in a flourish of enthusiasm, announced pledges of $7 billion from Arab allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar and $10 billion from the United States to rebuild the Gaza Strip and distribute emergency aid to its two million inhabitants.

And he disclosed that five countries — Indonesia, Morocco, Albania, Kosovo and Kazakhstan — will contribute thousands of troops to the International Stabilization Force (ISF), which is supposed to patrol Gaza after Israel’s gradual withdrawal.

Currently, Israel occupies 53 percent of the coastal enclave, while Hamas is in charge of 47 percent of it.

According to the ISF’s commander, Jasper Jeffers, a general in the US army, its mission will begin in Rafah, a town in southern ⁠Gaza adjacent to the Egyptian border. From Rafah, the ISF will “expand ​sector by sector,” he said.

Egypt and Jordan, in the meantime, have agreed to train ‌an internal Palestinian police force.

While Palestinian representatives are not on the Board of Peace, Palestinian technocrats will govern Gaza under the framework of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a transitional body designed to replace Hamas. Its members have yet to arrive in Gaza. Still based in Cairo, they are attending governance training workshops run by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

The chief commissioner of the NCAG, Ali Shaath, is a former deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority, which ruled Gaza from 1993 to 2007. Israel, in vain, has tried to prevent the Palestinian Authority from exercising influence in Gaza.

Trump announced the formation of the Board of Peace last autumn, saying it would supervise the truce that his administration brokered. The United Nations Security Council resolution later authorized it.

The Board of Peace was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and executive member, unveiled a glossy reconstruction plan featuring beach resorts, hotels and high-rise towers.

While it was initially seen as a body that would bring peace and prosperity to Gaza, Trump himself regards it as a forum to resolve conflicts across the world and, perhaps, supplant the United Nations As he said in a social media post, it will “present a bold Vision for the Civilians in Gaza, and then, ultimately, far beyond Gaza.”

Although the Board of Peace has officially begun to function, the path ahead is murky.

Major countries, such as Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Germany, have not joined it for one reason our another. Canada was disinvited by Trump due to his ire over a speech delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Reconstruction, in the estimation of the United Nations, could cost as much as $70 billion. Gaza’s redevelopment is contingent on the fulfillment of Board of Peace guidelines. They call for the disarmament of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza,  the deployment of the ISF, and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from all parts of Gaza except for a one-kilometre-wide buffer zone along its perimeter.

So far, the sole benchmark to be achieved has been the belated return of all the Israeli and foreign hostages, alive and dead, in Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s captivity.

Hamas kidnapped 251 people during its invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, an attack that triggered Israel’s invasion of Gaza and the Israel-Hamas war, which a US-brokered ceasefire ended last October.

The ceasefire has been very tenuous since then, with more than 600 Palestinian combatants and civilians and three Israeli soldiers having been killed in what Israel calls Hamas truce violations.

Israeli and Hamas forces are separated today by what is known as the Yellow Line, which was described as a provisional border by Trump’s 20-point peace plan, the first phase of which expired in January.

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy, subsequently launched the second phase, calling it a transition from “ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance and reconstruction.”

These benchmarks will be difficult to achieve because Hamas remains armed. It is also fully in control of the area west of the Yellow Line. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hoped to destroy Hamas militarily and deprive it of the ability to rule Gaza again, but he did not achieve either of these objectives after two years of warfare.

The Trump administration has been reportedly drafting a phased disarmament deal under which Hamas would surrender all its offensive weapons, but allowed to keep some small arms.

Nickolay Mladenov, a former United Nations official who is currently the Board of Peace representative in Gaza, recently met Khalil al-Hayya, a high-ranking Hamas leader, in Cairo to discuss disarmament. Hayya refused to address it, underscoring the fact that Hamas is still a force to be reckoned with and may yet play a role in postwar Gaza.

Khaled Mashaal, a Hamas leader based in Qatar and the object of an attempted Israeli assassination nearly 30 years ago, said that its weapons are sacrosanct and cannot be relinquished.

This is not music to Israel’s ears.

A few days ago, Netanyahu said that Israel would not move to phase two unless Hamas gives up its weapons. He claims that Hamas still possesses 60,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. “There will be no rehabilitation (in Gaza) before (its) demilitarization,” he said. “Very soon, Hamas will face a dilemma — to give up its weapons the easy way, or to give up its weapons the hard way.”

Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary, Yossi Fuchs, has warned that Israel will resume military operations in Gaza should Hamas refuse to disarm.

Mladenov has expressed fears that the current ceasefire may crumble and lead to a resumption of the war, which has claimed the lives of 71,000 Palestinians and almost 500 Israeli soldiers.

If this scenario unfolds, it could well be the death knell of the Board of Peace.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)