Donald Trump’s so‑called Board of Peace is not a peace initiative.
It is a permanent concentration of power designed to legitimise dispossession, commercialise destruction and convert grave breaches of international law into a branded property development project.
By appointing himself chairman for life and granting himself the authority to select his own successor, Trump has constructed a self‑perpetuating body devoid of democratic mandate, legal accountability or international legitimacy.
The central objective of the ‘Board of Peace’ is to advance Trump’s openly stated ambition to transform Gaza into a high‑tech luxury destination – the so‑called Gaza Riviera. This framing reduces the reconstruction of a devastated territory with a right to Palestine statehood to a real estate transaction.
It treats land as an asset to be monetised and people as variables to be managed, while Palestinian rights, consent and sovereignty are excluded entirely from the equation.
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Under this model, Gaza’s future is engineered not for its inhabitants but for the global wealthy. Palestinians are positioned as a disposable labour force while Trump, his associates, and aligned investors are poised to own, control and profit from land, infrastructure and economic activity.
Jared Kushner’s public pitch at Davos made this vision explicit: private development without Palestinian peoples’ ownership, growth without rights, and reconstruction without self‑determination.
Such a framework mirrors historical patterns of colonial economic domination and violates the core principles of international humanitarian and human rights law.
The Board of Peace further seeks to launder illegality through institutional endorsement.
The decision by members of the UN Security Council to endorse this body represents a profound failure of legal responsibility.
No political forum has the authority to legitimise land acquisition by force, collective punishment or the permanent exclusion of an occupied population from decisions governing its territory.
Endorsement does not confer legality, and repetition does not transform unlawful acts into lawful outcomes.
The board’s true function is to normalise and legalise land seizure under the language of peace and development. This is not conflict resolution; it is rebranding.
It attempts to convert violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force, and the right of peoples to self‑determination into greedy investment opportunities protected by political power.
Participation by certain states in the Board of Peace has been perceived to have been secured through economic coercion, including threats of punitive tariffs. Consent obtained through pressure and retaliation is not consent – it is compulsion.
Any process built on coercion further undermines the claim that this body represents a legitimate or voluntary international effort.
Notably, the Board of Peace was conceived, negotiated and announced without the presence, knowledge or consent of Palestinian political representatives, civil society or affected communities.
Decisions about Gaza’s land, economy and future were made in rooms where Palestinians were deliberately left out. This exclusion alone renders the initiative invalid under international norms governing self‑determination and participatory governance.
While the board speaks abstractly of ‘development’, it has failed to address the immediate and catastrophic realities on the ground. Gaza’s population faces continuing insecurity, severe shortages of food, medicines, clean water, sanitation and access to education.
Any initiative that prioritises luxury infrastructure and speculative investment while ignoring mass deprivation and humanitarian collapse is not a peace plan – it is a moral inversion.
Peace cannot be imposed through ownership structures, enforced silence or economic dependency. It cannot be chaired for life, inherited by appointment or traded for market access.
Genuine peace requires justice, accountability and the full recognition of Palestinian rights under international law.
We categorically reject Trump’s Board of Peace as illegitimate, unlawful and dangerous.
The international community must refuse to participate in schemes that disguise dispossession as development and exploitation as peace. Anything less is complicity.
- Nurul Izzah Anwar, executive chairperson, Polity; honorary advisor, Malaysian Humanitarian Aid and Relief (Mahar)
- Charles Santiago, co-chair, Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR)
- Chee Yoke Ling, executive director, Third World Network
- Professor Mohd Afandi Saleh, chairman, Pure Hands Malaysia
- Jismi Johari, president, Malaysian Humanitarian Aid and Relief (Mahar)
- Meenakshi Raman, president, Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM)
- Mohideen Abdul Kader, president, Consumers’ Association of Penang (CAP)
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