THE first meeting of the so-called Board of Peace (BoP) takes place in the US this coming Thursday, where some details are likely to emerge of President Donald Trump’s plan to address the core issues of funding the rebuilding of Gaza, the makeup of the international stabilisation force (ISF) and the possible disarming of Hamas.
Despite Western lamentation about the collapse of the rules-based order (it never represented rules or order to the majority of the Global South which was at the receiving end), the current structure does acquire its legitimacy via UN approval — at least for now, as sceptics see the BoP formation as Trump’s move to replace the UN with an entity he can control. Media reports in the West suggest that a fair amount of homework has already gone into giving concrete shape to the plan whose outlines will become clear on Thursday when many of the aspects covering the issues being mentioned here are likely to be made public.
Gaza’s rebuilding and rehabilitation will require tens of billions of dollars over a sustained period of time and it is yet to be seen where that level of funding will be coming from. Will the effort be mainly funded by the resource-rich Gulf Arab states or will global private investors also pledge funds for a share in Trump’s ‘Gaza Riviera’ pie?
Linked to the funding issue will obviously be the future of the Gaza Palestinians in the Strip because there are legitimate fears they might be pushed back into narrow ghettos between the plush high-rise waterfront real estate and Israeli security walls, buffers and barriers and deprived of access to the Mediterranean which they have enjoyed in the worst of times.
All eyes will remain on the Board of Peace meeting. So far only Indonesia seems to have pledged 8,000 troops for the ISF.
With not one Palestinian on the apex board and neither on the next tier (only one on the third and the lowest-level body), which member(s) of the BoP will stand up for the interests of the rightful owners of the land? As a group working in tandem, the Arab states and other nations, such as Turkiye, Pakistan and Indonesia, can exercise influence; it remains to be seen exactly how much they are willing to and to what end.
All eyes will remain on the BoP meeting because so far only Indonesia seems to have pledged 8,000 troops for the ISF; others including Pakistan are holding back till there is clarity that the troops will be in a peacekeeping rather than an enforcement role.
In other words, a mechanism will have to be agreed with Hamas for the group’s voluntary decommissioning of weapons.
Hamas’s agreement is a prerequisite or the whole edifice of the BoP and its plan will collapse, as no Muslim state appears prepared to participate in the ISF if it is mandated to use force to disarm Hamas, a task Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) couldn’t accomplish after two years of genocide and use of indiscriminate, unchecked firepower.
Any ISF and Hamas clash would trigger such anger in the home countries of the participating forces that it could very quickly destabilise some of them and upset the very delicate equilibrium that prevails there. Not coming to the aid of the Palestinians during months and months of IOF genocide was one thing. Militarily confronting Hamas will be altogether different.
Earlier, Hamas was very clear it would not give up weapons till a complete withdrawal of IOF from Gaza. That has not happened. Israel has fortified its positions within Gaza all along the eastern side and this has left the Strip narrower than it was. If the apartheid state does not agree to make concessions, it would be difficult to predict the consequences.
The psychopathic genocidal Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power at the head of a coalition of parties and leaders (nothing less than murderous gangsters in my view) even more extremist than himself, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who oppose any deal. Any concessions can bring down his government.
His government can also fall if it fails to exempt from compulsory military service the members of an orthodox Jewish party that has made its support to Netanyahu conditional on the exemption. This pushes him into a tighter corner and he knows if he ceases being prime minister, he will be a step closer to prison because the corruption charges against him are of a serious nature. He has profited in more ways than one from the Gaza genocide.
For now, the ‘ceasefire’ is said to be holding only because the Israeli genocidal machine has taken its foot off the accelerator. The killings have not stopped. Far from it. But yes, the rate of Israeli slaughter of Palestinians has slowed down. Since the ceasefire in October 2025, in four months, the IOF has killed a fifth of the number of Palestinians it was annihilating every month for two years since October 2023. And we are supposed to be grateful for this drop in the mass murder rate!
There are various benchmarks one could use to assess the BoP performance. To me, if at all the BoP decisions bring respite to those living or trying to survive in the killing fields of Gaza, and lead to the rebuilding and rehabilitation of their homes and infrastructure, with no accompanying displacement, then something positive would have been achieved.
The path to Palestinian statehood is still unclear. However, the genocide in Gaza has stripped Israel of the legitimacy it has claimed for its cause for years. Regardless of government positions in the US and Western Europe, among Gen-Z and other younger segments of their population there has been a dramatic shift from unconditional support for the apartheid state to the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause.
Decision-makers in the apartheid state should shed their hubris and look very carefully at the long-term consequences of such a shift.
The writer is a former editor of Dawn.
Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2026
