Trump’s Gaza plan kicks the can down the road.

When President Donald Trump unveiled the charter for his new Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 22, the announcement was framed as a turning point: the moment when the Gaza war would give way to reconstruction, governance, and a carefully managed peace. The rhetoric was grand, the guest list international, and the ambition unmistakable. Yet the substance of the plan—and the political assumptions beneath it—suggest something more familiar: a sophisticated attempt to manage the aftermath of catastrophe without confronting its root causes.

The Board of Peace, or BoP, is the institutional centerpiece of the Trump administration’s second phase of its Gaza initiative. Backed by a UN Security Council resolution in November 2025, the board has been granted international legitimacy and a sweeping mandate. It is tasked with overseeing Gaza’s demilitarization, coordinating reconstruction, and supervising a new Palestinian technocratic administration responsible for day‑to‑day governance. President Trump will chair the board indefinitely under its charter, extending his role beyond his current term.

The composition of the board reflects Washington’s priorities. Its executive members include senior U.S. officials, Trump confidants, and a small circle of international figures, among them former British prime minister Tony Blair and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Leaders from more than a dozen countries—ranging from Saudi Arabia and Turkey to Hungary and Paraguay—have endorsed the charter. Notably absent from the document itself, however, is any direct reference to Gaza. The omission is telling. What is being constructed is not a Gaza‑specific peace mechanism so much as a broad conflict‑management body, with Gaza as its first proving ground.

Trump described the BoP as “the most prestigious Board of Leaders ever assembled,” predicting rapid success in Gaza and the eventual expansion of the model elsewhere. His son‑in‑law, Jared Kushner, who has played a central role in negotiating the ceasefire and shaping the reconstruction vision, went further. Presenting what he called a plan for “catastrophic success,” Kushner sketched a future Gaza transformed into a Mediterranean hub of investment and opportunity.

According to Kushner, at least $25 billion would be mobilized to rebuild Gaza’s shattered infrastructure. Within a decade, he claimed, the territory’s gross domestic product could reach $10 billion, with average household incomes rising to $13,000 a year. Aid‑dependence, he argued, had long deprived Gazans of dignity and hope. Reconstruction, in this telling, would replace charity with entrepreneurship.

The plan’s physical scope is vast. Roughly 90,000 tons of munitions have been dropped on Gaza since October 2023, leaving an estimated 60 million tons of rubble. Kushner’s proposal envisions clearing that debris while constructing a new seaport and airport near the Egyptian border, alongside a trilateral crossing point with Israel and Egypt. Redevelopment would proceed in phases, beginning in the south at Rafah and moving northward. “New Rafah,” as the plan describes it, would feature more than 100,000 housing units, hundreds of schools, and dozens of medical facilities—completed, optimistically, within two to three years.

Security, however, is the plan’s non‑negotiable foundation. The October 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—brokered by Washington—committed the militant group to demilitarization as part of a phased process. Kushner has been blunt about the stakes. There is no “plan B,” he has said. Hamas must disarm, or the entire project collapses.

That insistence collides with political reality. Hamas has repeatedly stated that it will not relinquish its weapons without firm guarantees of Palestinian statehood and an end to Israeli occupation. Trump, for his part, has warned the group that refusal would mean annihilation. The standoff underscores a central tension of the plan: it demands irreversible concessions from Hamas while offering Palestinians little clarity about their political future.

The ceasefire itself remains fragile. Its first phase halted large‑scale hostilities, enabled limited Israeli withdrawals, facilitated prisoner and hostage exchanges, and allowed an increase in humanitarian aid. Yet even as violence subsided, Gaza’s humanitarian crisis persisted. Entire neighborhoods, hospitals, and schools lie in ruins. Nearly a million people lack adequate shelter, and more than 1.6 million face acute food insecurity. Winter storms have compounded the misery, flooding makeshift camps and exposing families to freezing temperatures.

UN officials have warned that conditions in Gaza remain “inhumane.” Although aid deliveries have increased since October, they fall far short of what is required. Israeli restrictions on the entry of tents, mobile homes, fuel, and construction materials continue to bottleneck relief efforts, despite commitments made under the ceasefire. Health services are overwhelmed, with UN agencies struggling to treat thousands of patients daily amid shortages of medicine, electricity, and clean water.

Violations of the ceasefire, meanwhile, have become routine. Israeli strikes have killed hundreds of Palestinians since October, including children and journalists, often justified as responses to alleged militant activity. Hamas has accused Israel of systematically undermining the truce, while Israel insists it is enforcing security lines. The result is a ceasefire that prevents all‑out war but offers little sense of safety or permanence.

Against this backdrop, the Board of Peace is expected to oversee the transition to a second phase: deeper Israeli withdrawal, the deployment of an international stabilization force, and the handover of Gaza’s administration to a Palestinian technocratic body known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. Headed by a former Palestinian Authority official from Khan Younis, the committee has pledged to restore basic services and stabilize daily life while laying the groundwork for longer‑term governance.

Yet skepticism among Palestinians is widespread. Many question how much autonomy a technocratic administration can exercise under Israeli military constraints and U.S. supervision. Others point to the Palestinian Authority’s waning legitimacy, corruption scandals, and limited presence in Gaza. There is also the unresolved issue of representation. Palestinian civil society groups say they were not consulted in the design of the plan, reinforcing the perception that Gaza’s future is being negotiated over the heads of its residents.

Critics argue that the Trump initiative reduces a political conflict to an administrative challenge. Reconstruction, investment, and security coordination are treated as substitutes for addressing sovereignty, borders, and self‑determination. The plan assumes that economic revival can precede, or even replace, political resolution. History suggests otherwise.

The scale of Gaza’s devastation illustrates the limits of technocratic fixes. More than 80 percent of the territory’s buildings have been destroyed or damaged. Nearly all major hospitals and universities are in ruins. Electricity and water systems have collapsed, and agricultural land has been rendered unusable. The United Nations estimates that rebuilding Gaza could cost upwards of $70 billion and take decades, even under ideal conditions. Clearing unexploded ordnance alone may require ten years.

Economic indicators are equally grim. Unemployment has surged by roughly 80 percent since the war began. Gross domestic product has collapsed, and per capita income has fallen to among the lowest levels globally. Aid and remittances keep many families alive, but they cannot substitute for a functioning economy under conditions of restricted movement and recurring violence.

Within Israel, the plan exposes deep political divisions. Prime Minister Netanyahu has joined the Board of Peace, projecting cooperation with Washington as elections loom. Yet his governing coalition includes hard‑line ministers who oppose both the ceasefire and Gaza’s reconstruction, viewing the territory as land to be controlled or even resettled. Netanyahu must balance international expectations against domestic pressures, framing the ceasefire’s second phase as tentative rather than transformative.

Israeli society, exhausted after more than two years of war, remains deeply ambivalent. Many Israelis support a continued military presence in Gaza to ensure security, distrust international forces, and doubt the viability of Palestinian governance. For others, U.S. involvement offers hope that diplomacy might achieve what force could not. What unites these views is a widespread reluctance to confront the political implications of permanent occupation.

Regionally, the initiative places Arab and Muslim states in a dilemma. Participation offers influence over Gaza’s future but carries the risk of being blamed for inevitable failures. Without a clear political mandate, any international body governing Gaza could find itself enforcing constraints it did not design while absorbing public anger it cannot deflect. The danger is that international management becomes a substitute for accountability rather than a bridge to resolution.

That concern has been articulated most clearly by regional analysts who warn that Gaza risks becoming a de facto international trusteeship—administered, funded, and stabilized without ever being resolved. Order may be restored, but justice deferred. Calm may return, but legitimacy remains elusive.

Supporters of the plan counter that stopping the bloodshed, even imperfectly, is an achievement in itself. After months of relentless bombardment, the ceasefire has saved lives. Any mechanism that prevents a return to full‑scale war, they argue, deserves support. From this perspective, the Board of Peace is a necessary first step, however incomplete.

That argument carries weight. Crisis management matters when human survival is at stake. Yet crisis management is not peace. Without a credible political horizon—one that addresses Palestinian unity, territorial integrity, and the end of occupation—reconstruction risks entrenching the status quo rather than transforming it. Militant groups may be weakened, but the conditions that give rise to them persist.

Global public opinion has increasingly recognized this gap. Protests across Europe and North America, along with reports from international human rights organizations, have shifted the discourse. Allegations of genocide, systematic deprivation, and collective punishment have placed unprecedented pressure on Israel and its allies. So far, however, that pressure has not translated into decisive policy change.

The Trump administration’s approach reflects a familiar impatience. After years of stalemate and months of humanitarian catastrophe, Washington wants movement—any movement—away from active conflict. The Board of Peace offers structure, visibility, and the promise of control. What it does not yet offer is a path to sovereignty or reconciliation.

The fundamental question, then, is one of intent. Is the goal to end the war, or merely to manage its consequences more efficiently? If the Board of Peace evolves into a bridge toward a genuine political settlement—one that acknowledges Palestinian rights and Israeli security within an agreed framework—it could mark a meaningful step forward. If it remains confined to administrative engineering, it risks becoming another chapter in Gaza’s long history of postponed solutions.

Gaza does not suffer from a shortage of plans. It suffers from a shortage of political courage. Reconstruction, governance, and security arrangements are necessary but not sufficient. Without addressing the underlying political reality, even the most ambitious peace architecture may do little more than stabilize an unjust peace—one that looks orderly from afar while leaving the core conflict unresolved.