Board of Peace

Overview

The Board of Peace is usually described as Donald Trump’s Gaza board. That description is accurate but undersized — because the board is only the top node of a UN-endorsed transitional administration whose own charter deliberately outgrew Gaza. Adopted January 18, 2026, the charter establishes the board as a multinational body with a broad peace-and-stability mission “notably without explicit reference to Gaza,” with Trump as permanent chair holding broad unilateral authority to invite and dismiss members and set the agenda (Israel Policy Forum). Its legal backbone is UN Security Council Resolution 2803, adopted November 17, 2025, which endorses Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan, recognizes the board as a temporary international administration pending a reformed Palestinian Authority’s return, and authorizes a time-limited International Stabilization Force (Israel Policy Forum). Permanent membership costs $1 billion; inaugural members serve three-year terms (Israel Policy Forum).

The architecture underneath the board

The full institutional framework came together in four documents across the fall of 2025 and January 2026. First, the 20-point plan unveiled September 29, 2025 — framed by the White House as a “comprehensive plan” calling for a terror-free Gaza, Hamas’ disarmament, the hostages’ return, technocratic governance, an International Stabilization Force, a phased Israeli withdrawal, and a special economic zone, with the Board of Peace as an “international transitional body” to oversee the ceasefire (Israel Policy Forum). On October 21, U.S. Central Command announced a Civil-Military Coordination Center in Israel to support Gaza’s stabilization and humanitarian-aid flow, clarifying that U.S. personnel would not deploy into Gaza (Israel Policy Forum). Then came UNSCR 2803 on November 17, and on January 16, 2026 — two days after special envoy Steve Witkoff announced the ceasefire’s second phase — the White House detailed the formation of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a board executive board, and a Gaza executive board (Israel Policy Forum).

The roster tells you how the machine is meant to work. The board’s principal decision-making body, the BoP Executive Board, manages funds, sets the agenda and directs day-to-day operations; its members are Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, Marc Rowan, Robert Gabriel, Ajay Banga, and Nickolay Mladenov as Gaza High Representative, with Aryeh Lightstone and Joshua Gruenbaum as senior advisers (Israel Policy Forum). The Gaza Executive Board — tasked with administration, service delivery and disarmament — draws from the same circle plus regional figures: Witkoff, Kushner, Blair, Rowan, Mladenov, Turkey’s Hakan Fidan, Qatar’s Ali al-Thawadi, Egypt’s intelligence chief Hassan Rashad, the UAE’s Reem al-Hashimy, Cypriot-Israeli businessman Yakir Gabay, and Dutch politician Sigrid Kaag (Israel Policy Forum). The NCAG is the Palestinian technocratic layer: fifteen experts on housing, finance, education and telecommunications, chaired by Dr. Ali Shaath, a longtime civil servant who served as a deputy minister in the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Planning — and, according to Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty, its composition was approved by all Palestinian factions, including Hamas, and vetted by Israel (Israel Policy Forum). Security belongs to Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, named ISF commander in the January 16 statement, while the CMCC in Kiryat Gat — operated by CENTCOM under Lt. Gen. Patrick Frank and Ambassador Steven Fagin — coordinates humanitarian entry outside the board framework but alongside its partners (Israel Policy Forum).

One structural fact no launch-day coverage dwells on: as of January 2026, there was no Palestinian representation on either the BoP Executive Board or the Gaza Executive Board, and Israel had not allowed NCAG members to enter Gaza (Israel Policy Forum). Prominent NATO allies — the UK, France, Norway, Sweden — declined to join, citing concerns about Russia being invited and about the board sidelining the UN (Israel Policy Forum).

From pledge day to the field

The inaugural meeting on February 19, 2026, at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington is the set piece every account repeats, and the numbers are worth stating once: nine members pledged $7 billion toward a Gaza relief package — Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kuwait — while Trump announced a $10 billion U.S. pledge, without specifying its use and without clarity on where the money would come from, since a pledge that size needs congressional authorization (Associated Press). Five countries — Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania — pledged troops for the stabilization force, with Egypt and Jordan committing to train police; the first deployment was planned for Rafah (Associated Press). Against the estimated $70 billion needed to rebuild the territory, the pledges were, in the AP’s framing, “a fraction” of the need (Associated Press).

The meeting’s real Trump-series significance is recorded in the government’s own transcript: the official record of the remarks names “his son-in-law, U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Jared C. Kushner” among those present — the formal title announced at the gathering, which also seated him on the board’s Executive Board (govinfo.gov). The transcript also preserves the day’s stranger details: Trump’s claim that the building had been renamed for him by a group including Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance, and the onstage handshake between Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Nikol Pashinyan after what Trump described as 32 years of fighting (govinfo.gov). Nearly 50 countries and the EU sent officials; Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and the UK attended as observers rather than members; Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto, Argentina’s Javier Milei and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán traveled in person (Associated Press).

What happened after pledge day is the part the reference coverage skips. In March the board handed Hamas a written disarmament proposal — first reported by NPR — submitted during Cairo meetings attended by Mladenov and Lightstone, with Mladenov publicly demanding “full decommissioning by Hamas and every armed group, with no exceptions and no carve-outs” (The Algemeiner). Disarmament talks were then paused when the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, and one source said only a small amount of the pledged $7 billion had actually been provided (The Algemeiner). In July, Israel Hayom reported the board would pilot humanitarian shelter centers in areas of Gaza not under Hamas control, starting at Tel al-Sultan near Rafah, with a non-lethal ISF contingent stationed at the Israeli Amitai Camp — and with board officials pledging no concrete would be used, only mobile housing units with medical and essential services (anews.com.tr). By September, Mladenov had presented a 15-point roadmap for the initiative, and board envoys were preparing their first entry into the enclave since the body’s formation (Türkiye Today). On September 23, Abdelatty met with Kushner — listed by then as Advisor to the U.S. President — Witkoff and Blair on consolidating long-term peace and regional stability (EgyptToday).

The tensions built into the design

The board’s hardest problem was named on day one: disarming Hamas, which Trump called the sticking point that could “delay or even derail” the plan (Associated Press). Israel’s position, repeated by Netanyahu from a southern army base, was that there would be “no reconstruction” before demilitarization — and as of March 2026, Israel still controlled roughly half of Gaza’s territory while Hamas held the other half (Associated Press; The Algemeiner). Trump’s expanded vision — a board that would not only finish the Gaza job but “help resolve conflicts around the globe” — triggered fears he was building a rival to the United Nations (Associated Press). Trump pushed back in the transcript itself: “Someday I won’t be here. The United Nations will be. I think it is going to be much stronger, and the Board of Peace is going to almost be looking over the United Nations and making sure it runs properly” (govinfo.gov). Whether a body with a permanent chairman holding unilateral membership control outlasts its founder is one of the open questions the policy literature names explicitly (Israel Policy Forum).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not assert how much of the pledged $7 billion (or the $10 billion U.S. pledge) has actually been delivered — one sourced report says only a small amount of the $7 billion arrived, without figures, and the U.S. pledge would require congressional authorization. It does not claim the International Stabilization Force has deployed, the NCAG has entered Gaza, or any country has paid the $1 billion permanent-membership contribution; none of those were confirmed in the sources read for this profile. It presents the “no Palestinian representation” criticism and the pledge shortfall as reported, not as settled fact. It does not repeat the exact onstage wording of Kushner’s envoy announcement, which was available only at snippet level; it uses the official transcript’s formal title instead. And it treats Israel Hayom’s shelter-pilot reporting as what it is — an anonymously-sourced newspaper report — rather than board policy.