The two million people of the Gaza Strip have suffered years of siege, bombardment, destitution, starvation and disease. Now, as the ceasefire reached in October 2025 reaches its second phase, their hopes for an enduring end to conflict and a stable future rest with a new body – the Board of Peace – under the leadership of U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump’s dominion in the Palestinian enclave is neither direct nor total. He exercises it in tandem with the Israeli authorities (over whom he has powers of persuasion but no control) and through the Board. But his role is significant. Endorsed by the UN Security Council, the Board has broad powers over security and governance in Gaza – at least on paper – and Trump, as chair, has broad powers over the Board.

Trump has summoned the uppermost layer of the Board’s governance structure, consisting of heads of state from the 27 countries that have signed the body’s U.S.-drafted charter, to a first meeting on 19 February. It is hard to know what to expect. The Board’s complex machinery does not seem engineered for effective governance. Beneath the heads of state who make up the Board sit an executive board dominated by people from the U.S., a more multinational Gaza executive board and a Palestinian technical committee for administering Gaza. Responsibilities are not clearly delineated. In theory, an international stabilisation force is meant to fit within this framework and report to the Board, but it remains unclear who will send troops, who will pay them or what exactly their mandate will be.

It remains to be seen whether this cumbersome mechanism will be capable of cutting through the bundle of interlocking interests and human passions in Gaza. Still, by tethering the Trump administration to the peace process, and other Board members to the task of managing Trump, it has created a dynamic that could yet be useful in bringing a durable peace to the beleaguered strip.

The Board is wading into the Gaza crisis at a challenging moment. In January, the U.S. announced that Trump’s peace plan would be entering its second phase after 100 days of a very choppy phase one. At least on paper, the first phase was dedicated to establishing a ceasefire, dramatically increasing humanitarian aid, returning hostages and hostage remains to Israel, and releasing Palestinian prisoners. Phase two is meant to focus on governance, through the establishment of the Palestinian technical committee, demilitarisation, including Hamas’s disarmament, and the beginnings of the strip’s reconstruction.

It will be no small task. While the situation has improved for Palestinians since the ceasefire went into effect on 10 October 2025, as one would expect for the period immediately following a major war, life continues to be extremely difficult. The ceasefire stopped what would have been a crushing Israeli final offensive in Gaza City. Hamas freed all the Israelis it was still holding captive; more aid flowed into Gaza; and Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Yet Israel continues to occupy most of the strip, including virtually all its agriculturally useful land, to severely restrict the entry of essential goods, to launch lethal strikes at its discretion and (in the name of security) to imprison more than 10,000 Palestinians and keep more than 700 Palestinian corpses. During the ceasefire, Israeli strikes on Gaza’s population centres – most of them reduced to tent cities – have killed at a rate of five per day, amounting to more than 590 dead since 10 October 2025. Meanwhile, Hamas remains the dominant power in the parts of the strip that Israel does not control, which is where all but a few Palestinians live. It continues to hold heavy weapons, and the territory is awash in light arms.

As if that were not enough for the Board to take on, the White House unveiled yet grander plans for the fledgling body in Davos, Switzerland, where 23 heads of state signed a U.S.-drafted charter in January (four more joined later). Under the vision announced at Davos and memorialised in the charter, the Board would have a mandate to address conflicts everywhere, not just in Gaza as the UN Security Council resolution endorsing it envisaged. The Trump administration stopped short of saying it wants the Board to replace the Security Council or try to assume its powers, which include the authority to use force and make other legally binding decisions. But it hinted that the Board could well stray into the Council’s territory, by becoming a hub for global peacemaking efforts. The charter also laid out extraordinarily broad prerogatives for Trump, who as chair is granted sole power to invite members, a veto over the Board’s decisions and the right to “create, modify or dissolve subsidiary entities”.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that many invited states declined the offer. Those that did sign up are heavily weighted toward countries with a direct stake in the Gaza process – including several key Arab powers, Türkiye, Israel and potential troop contributors such as Pakistan and Indonesia, which has said it is preparing up to 8,000 troops for deployment. Bulgaria (pending ratification by the National Assembly) and Hungary are the only two European Union member states to join, and neither Russia nor China chose to do so. Moreover, few of the members show much appetite for Trump’s bigger schemes. Eight key majority-Muslim countries that signed on to the initiative (including five Arab states as well as Indonesia, Pakistan and Türkiye) have hinted that their participation is really about Gaza. Their 1 February joint statement criticised Israel for violating the ceasefire; invoked the Security Council’s endorsement of the Trump peace plan; and expressed their commitment to “advancing a just and lasting peace grounded in the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood in accordance with international law”.

These countries, which compose nearly a third of the Board’s 27 signatories, are well positioned to hold its feet to the fire on Gaza by making clear that they will deem the exercise a success or a failure depending on how it performs in advancing phase two. Such a tactic would be sensible. The unspoken reasoning behind Middle Eastern support for the Board is that Trump – and only Trump – has the leverage to press Israel into the kinds of concessions that will be needed to reach an accommodation with Hamas. One might be to show flexibility as to what Hamas’s “disarmament” will mean in practice. Conversely, many states rooting for peace in Gaza hope that countries on the Board with influence over Hamas (such as Qatar, Türkiye and Egypt) will push the group to deliver on its side of the bargain. But while creating mutual dependencies is the essence of wise diplomacy, the test lies in exercising leverage when it is needed and patiently sustaining it. The Arab states that joined the Board will need to gently remind Trump that the Board’s legacy, and by extension his own as a peacemaker, is on the line. The U.S., for its part, will need to exert significant pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump is likely to struggle with this task. Though he has become, at least formally, Gaza’s faraway king, the ground reality is that Israel still controls Gaza’s borders, its skies, its coast and, to a great extent, its networks of water supply, electricity and communications. In this complicated game, where the Board has wrested some responsibility for Gaza’s future from Israel, but Israel has a great deal to say about its present, neither Trump, nor Netanyahu nor any other Board member is strong enough to roll over the other players. Those who show the patience to keep pressing their agenda are thus likely to be rewarded for persistence.

But though the Trump administration deserves credit for delivering a ceasefire, sustained pressure on Israel has not been a hallmark of its approach. While he has pushed Netanyahu toward de-escalation on occasion, Trump often does so with one hand while propping up the Israeli premier with the other. Just before taking office in January 2025, for instance, the U.S. president helped impose a truce in Gaza, but only six weeks later he greenlighted a renewed Israeli onslaught. When Israel’s 9 September 2025 attack on Doha targeting Hamas officials infuriated Arab states, giving Trump the impetus to push through a ceasefire, he announced the plan with Netanyahu at his side – having altered the terms earlier agreed to by Arab leaders in ways more (though not entirely) favourable to Israel. In early 2026, the Trump team leaned on Israel to open the border crossing into Egypt at Rafah, Gaza’s only outlet to the outside world – raising hopes that more aid would get in, thousands of severely wounded people would be able to get out and thousands more who have been stuck in exile for two years would be able to go home. Israel grudgingly agreed to open Rafah, but in practice it allows only a handful of people to cross daily – and it has suffered no public reproach from the U.S. Nor has Trump publicly complained about Israel’s killing of hundreds of Palestinians when it has ostensibly committed to cease firing.

While Trump’s actions and inactions will likely be the most important factor in determining the Board’s effectiveness, Palestinians and their supporters nevertheless worry about the body’s internal workings – not least because so many people whom the White House has inserted into its upper echelons (such as presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and former British premier Tony Blair) have longstanding ties to Israel. Many of them know Netanyahu personally. Despite having been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Netanyahu himself sits on the Board, and Israeli businessman Yakir Gabay is a member of a subsidiary executive council. By contrast, no Palestinian was invited to join the top three tiers of the Board; all have been relegated to the technical committee. Meanwhile, the main architect of Trump’s Gaza policy, Kushner, paints a picture of tranquil prosperity in a future Gaza – one in which he might stand to profit – that is both strikingly difficult to square with present reality and uninformed by the actual wishes of Gaza’s people.

Yet if the Palestinians have misgivings concerning the Board of Peace, so do many Israelis, especially in Netanyahu’s camp. They vehemently object to the membership of Qatar and Türkiye, countries that have hosted exiled Hamas leaders yet remain close partners of the Trump administration, and wonder how a body that includes them will deal fairly with the group. Israel was also seemingly blindsided by the announcement in Davos that the crossing at Rafah would be opened to two-way traffic, a move that Israel had conditioned on Hamas returning the last dead hostage’s body. (This condition was in any case met on 27 January, when Israeli soldiers exhumed a slain Israeli policeman’s remains in Gaza.) The prevailing narrative in Israel – and the criticism of Netanyahu voiced by many – is that it is conceding control of Gaza. The perception is that the U.S. now sets the agenda, in ways that may not serve Israeli interests. Whether this situation represents “internationalisation” of the conflict – a word that connotes unhelpful foreign meddling in the Israeli lexicon – or its “Americanisation”, the spectacle can only be uncomfortable for Netanyahu in an Israeli election year.

It is anyone’s guess how these political forces will play out as the Board wrestles with its first major test, the question of what to do about Hamas’s weapons – widely seen as key to the ceasefire’s second phase. Trump himself included an explicit threat to Hamas in his comments at Davos, warning that its members will be “blown away” if they do not give up their arms. This kind of rhetoric is par for the course for Trump, but it also cannot be discounted. Still, playing this card (or, more likely, greenlighting Israel to do so) would deal a big blow to his crown jewel peace deal, and he is unlikely to want to see that happen.

So, what is the alternative? Hamas has long hewed to the position that it reserves the right to keep weapons for resistance as long as Israel is occupying Palestinian land. Hamas leaders contend that it is unreasonable to demand that “resistance” factions lay down weapons, including light arms, when Israel itself arms and finances mercenary gangs – seen by most Palestinians as traitorous criminals – to fight them. But for Israel, some form of disarmament is a red line. Israeli society is virtually unanimous in its determination to ensure that Gaza never again presents an armed threat on Israel’s borders. As a practical matter, Israel and Hamas will continue to clash in the strip absent some form of mutually agreed arrangement on disarmament, undermining any prospect for governance or reconstruction.

Nevertheless, there are openings for diplomacy. Though the group has kept its cards close to its chest, some in Hamas’s ranks have been quietly hinting at flexibility on this issue. Workarounds to address the issue of disarmament have been aired, such as putting weapons “beyond use” at a neutral site, creating a buy-back program or starting by collecting heavy offensive weapons, such as rockets, before moving on to other categories. Hamas has been willing to engage in such discussions privately. There is in theory room to manoeuvre, too, using Hamas’s public insistence that it could surrender weapons only to a legitimate Palestinian government, a formulation that dovetails with the Arab League’s call (and the Palestinian Authority’s as well) for a Palestinian government to impose a monopoly of arms in the territory. Yet, judging by discourse in Israel – where mention of a Palestinian state is now politically suicidal – the latter course is less than promising in at least the short and medium term. Bridging these divides and producing a workable compromise will require sustained U.S. engagement and pressure. 

When Trump took up the Gaza issue, his initial interest was in freeing Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Getting that done required constructing a complex bargain that locked everyone in uncomfortable relationships – tying Gaza to the Board of Peace, Arab States to Trump, Trump to his own promises, Israel to an internationalisation it does not want. Ending these interlocking forms of dependency will be far harder than resolving the original hostage crisis because it does not hinge on a direct exchange, but rather on nudging all these dynamics simultaneously onto a less dangerous path.

That is difficult but not impossible. It will likely require coordinated, concerted efforts on the part of U.S. allies and partners in the Arab and Muslim worlds to keep the Trump team focused on Gaza and to encourage it to take a patient, pragmatic approach. Yet daunting as the task may be, these states may now have incentives to pursue it, as they feel a collective sense of threat from an emboldened, unrestrained Israel. Israel has incentives, too: it wants to stay on Trump’s good side and to restore its battered image. More quietly, Israel’s people do not really relish returning to war, and its politicians are not offering realistic alternatives for Gaza’s future.

Right now, Gaza’s best hope is that these incentives do in fact govern the behaviour of key players in the ceasefire process. Trump’s Board of Peace is an awkward, ungainly construct. But at this stage, its failure would only prolong the misery in Gaza indefinitely.