Ali Abunimah
21 January 2026
US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace repackages genocide with “humanitarian” branding. Daniel TorokAvalon
Donald Trump is hard-selling a new brand, his so-called Board of Peace, as if this Orwellian name can hide the reality of the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza – and the chaos and conflict the American president is spreading globally from Venezuela to Greenland to Iran.
The White House is pitching this monster as a mechanism for “mobilizing international resources and ensuring accountability as Gaza transitions from conflict to peace and development.”
But it is just another vulgar pay-to-play scam with Trump claiming the role of chairman for life.
The invitation letter and draft charter say member states get three-year terms, unless they hand over $1 billion for permanent membership.
Board of predators
The White House says a “founding executive board” has already been assembled, stacked with Trump cronies, billionaire financiers and ultra-Zionists, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, envoy Steve Witkoff, real estate developer and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, globally reviled former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, World Bank President Ajay Banga and Marc Rowan, CEO of the vulture capitalist hedge fund Apollo.
Rowan has labeled recently inaugurated New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani an “enemy” of Jews for criticizing Israel.
That’s a good indicator of how much fairness Palestinians can expect.
There is also a separate Gaza “executive board” and a “high representative” – blatantly colonial structures harkening back to the days of League of Nations mandates.
The White House also states that American General Jasper Jeffers has been appointed commander of the so-called International Stabilization Force to “establish security, preserve peace and establish a durable terror-free environment.”
“Terror,” of course, is a reference to Palestinian resistance, not to Israeli genocide.
This unaccountable force, whose makeup remains a mystery, will, according to the White House, “lead security operations” and “support comprehensive demilitarization.”
The only Palestinian participation in all this is a handpicked “technocratic” committee led by Ali Shaath, a former official in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. It is supposed to manage Gaza’s affairs under external colonial supervision.
This looks like an even more degraded version of the 1993 Oslo accords, which established the Palestinian Authority as a body to collaborate with Israel against any Palestinian resistance to its deepening occupation and apartheid.
Concentration camps within concentration camps
Meanwhile, there are troubling signs that Israel – undoubtedly with full American backing – is preparing to create concentration camps for Palestinians in Gaza.
Or more accurately, concentration camps within a concentration camp.
The publication Drop Site and investigative group Forensic Architecture reported this week that “Israel is razing a strategic area of Rafah in southern Gaza, compacting the ground, and clearing rubble in a way that suggests the land is being prepared for the construction of new residential infrastructure.”
“The location lies on the northern edge of what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz first announced in July would be a planned ‘humanitarian city’ that would eventually house the entire population of the Gaza Strip,” the report states.
Arab regimes provide cover
So how many countries have joined Trump’s Board of Peace? It is reported that Trump invited about 50 countries to join.
The White House claims that 30 are expected to do so, but it has provided no details.
One leader who has accepted the invitation is none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court charged with crimes against humanity.
He ordered and has presided over the slaughter of at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the ongoing genocide, launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, continues to occupy and bomb Syria and Lebanon.
Netanyahu also murdered the prime minister and senior ministers in Yemen.
This genocidaire’s government just seized and demolished the headquarters of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, in occupied East Jerusalem.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia announced they were all accepting the invitation to join the Board of Peace and reaffirmed their support for what they described as the “peace efforts led by President Trump.”
They will now presumably take their seats at the table with the fugitive Netanyahu.
Other countries that have reportedly accepted Trump’s invitation include Armenia, Morocco, Vietnam, Belarus, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Argentina.
But there has also been limited pushback. France has declined, warning the board could replace the United Nations – although it is an open question how much of a loss that would be given how ineffective the world body has become.
Trump has threatened to retaliate with 200 percent tariffs on French wines.
Norway and Sweden have also refused or said they won’t sign up as things currently stand.
Others, including Canada, have been hedging, perhaps in hopes of avoiding the wrath of the mad king in Washington.
What is clear, as is so often the case, is that what starts in Palestine never stays there: Israel’s bestial experiments in human cruelty may begin in Gaza or the occupied West Bank, but quickly become models for the whole world.
So it is with this Board of Peace, which Trump and his accomplices apparently hope will be used to impose their will elsewhere across the planet.
What makes this all even more alarming is the complicity or at best negligence of perhaps the only powers that could effectively stand up to Washington.
Russia and China, which both routinely claim to defend the international system against US-engineered chaos, declined to veto UN Security Council resolution 2803, the framework that allowed Trump’s Board of Peace to move forward under a thin veil of international legitimacy.
By choosing abstention, they effectively handed Washington the cover it craved.
Their inaction, framed as diplomatic pragmatism and a response to the pleas of regional US puppets, has helped launder a genocidal apparatus as a collective international response.
At this point, the best hope to stop this madness is that Trump’s increasing aggression and threats against US vassals and allies will alienate enough countries to bring the whole project down.
The question then is whether the rest of the so-called international community – countries that still claim to uphold international law but which have cowered before the US – are ready to fulfill their binding legal obligation under the Genocide Convention to stop the US-fueled Israeli killing machine.
Nothing we’ve seen since the genocide started gives much hope that this will happen.
Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.
US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace repackages genocide with “humanitarian” branding. Daniel TorokAvalon
Donald Trump is hard-selling a new brand, his so-called Board of Peace, as if this Orwellian name can hide the reality of the ongoing US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza – and the chaos and conflict the American president is spreading globally from Venezuela to Greenland to Iran.
The White House is pitching this monster as a mechanism for “mobilizing international resources and ensuring accountability as Gaza transitions from conflict to peace and development.”
But it is just another vulgar pay-to-play scam with Trump claiming the role of chairman for life.
The invitation letter and draft charter say member states get three-year terms, unless they hand over $1 billion for permanent membership.
Board of predators
The White House says a “founding executive board” has already been assembled, stacked with Trump cronies, billionaire financiers and ultra-Zionists, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, envoy Steve Witkoff, real estate developer and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, globally reviled former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, World Bank President Ajay Banga and Marc Rowan, CEO of the vulture capitalist hedge fund Apollo.
Rowan has labeled recently inaugurated New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani an “enemy” of Jews for criticizing Israel.
That’s a good indicator of how much fairness Palestinians can expect.
There is also a separate Gaza “executive board” and a “high representative” – blatantly colonial structures harkening back to the days of League of Nations mandates.
The White House also states that American General Jasper Jeffers has been appointed commander of the so-called International Stabilization Force to “establish security, preserve peace and establish a durable terror-free environment.”
“Terror,” of course, is a reference to Palestinian resistance, not to Israeli genocide.
This unaccountable force, whose makeup remains a mystery, will, according to the White House, “lead security operations” and “support comprehensive demilitarization.”
The only Palestinian participation in all this is a handpicked “technocratic” committee led by Ali Shaath, a former official in the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. It is supposed to manage Gaza’s affairs under external colonial supervision.
This looks like an even more degraded version of the 1993 Oslo accords, which established the Palestinian Authority as a body to collaborate with Israel against any Palestinian resistance to its deepening occupation and apartheid.
Concentration camps within concentration camps
Meanwhile, there are troubling signs that Israel – undoubtedly with full American backing – is preparing to create concentration camps for Palestinians in Gaza.
Or more accurately, concentration camps within a concentration camp.
The publication Drop Site and investigative group Forensic Architecture reported this week that “Israel is razing a strategic area of Rafah in southern Gaza, compacting the ground, and clearing rubble in a way that suggests the land is being prepared for the construction of new residential infrastructure.”
“The location lies on the northern edge of what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz first announced in July would be a planned ‘humanitarian city’ that would eventually house the entire population of the Gaza Strip,” the report states.
Arab regimes provide cover
So how many countries have joined Trump’s Board of Peace? It is reported that Trump invited about 50 countries to join.
The White House claims that 30 are expected to do so, but it has provided no details.
One leader who has accepted the invitation is none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court charged with crimes against humanity.
He ordered and has presided over the slaughter of at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the ongoing genocide, launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, continues to occupy and bomb Syria and Lebanon.
Netanyahu also murdered the prime minister and senior ministers in Yemen.
This genocidaire’s government just seized and demolished the headquarters of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, in occupied East Jerusalem.
In a joint statement on Wednesday, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia announced they were all accepting the invitation to join the Board of Peace and reaffirmed their support for what they described as the “peace efforts led by President Trump.”
They will now presumably take their seats at the table with the fugitive Netanyahu.
Other countries that have reportedly accepted Trump’s invitation include Armenia, Morocco, Vietnam, Belarus, Hungary, Kazakhstan and Argentina.
But there has also been limited pushback. France has declined, warning the board could replace the United Nations – although it is an open question how much of a loss that would be given how ineffective the world body has become.
Trump has threatened to retaliate with 200 percent tariffs on French wines.
Norway and Sweden have also refused or said they won’t sign up as things currently stand.
Others, including Canada, have been hedging, perhaps in hopes of avoiding the wrath of the mad king in Washington.
What is clear, as is so often the case, is that what starts in Palestine never stays there: Israel’s bestial experiments in human cruelty may begin in Gaza or the occupied West Bank, but quickly become models for the whole world.
So it is with this Board of Peace, which Trump and his accomplices apparently hope will be used to impose their will elsewhere across the planet.
What makes this all even more alarming is the complicity or at best negligence of perhaps the only powers that could effectively stand up to Washington.
Russia and China, which both routinely claim to defend the international system against US-engineered chaos, declined to veto UN Security Council resolution 2803, the framework that allowed Trump’s Board of Peace to move forward under a thin veil of international legitimacy.
By choosing abstention, they effectively handed Washington the cover it craved.
Their inaction, framed as diplomatic pragmatism and a response to the pleas of regional US puppets, has helped launder a genocidal apparatus as a collective international response.
At this point, the best hope to stop this madness is that Trump’s increasing aggression and threats against US vassals and allies will alienate enough countries to bring the whole project down.
The question then is whether the rest of the so-called international community – countries that still claim to uphold international law but which have cowered before the US – are ready to fulfill their binding legal obligation under the Genocide Convention to stop the US-fueled Israeli killing machine.
Nothing we’ve seen since the genocide started gives much hope that this will happen.
Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.
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