Israel and Palestinian actors are both objecting to Donald Trump’s new “Board of Peace” for Gaza and its Gaza Executive Board because it is a top‑down, externally designed oversight structure that sidelines their own political agency and core interests. Without the meaningful participation of the two parties themselves, no diplomatic architecture – including Trump’s model – can deliver a real, durable peace.
What Trump’s “Board of Peace” Is
Trump’s plan centers on a US‑backed “Board of Peace” (BoP) for Gaza, embedded in a wider 20‑point “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” endorsed in a UN resolution. The BoP is mandated to oversee Gaza’s governance, reconstruction, and development at least until the end of 2027, while a technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) manages day‑to‑day affairs.
The president chairs the Board of Peace, whose founding executive members include US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Trump adviser Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, financier Marc Rowan, World Bank president Ajay Banga, and US political adviser Robert Gabriel. Former UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov has been named “high representative for Gaza,” serving as on‑the‑ground link between the BoP, the NCAG, and an International Stabilization Force commanded by Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers.
Why Israel Objects
Israel’s objections focus less on the concept of international oversight and more on the composition and coordination of the scheme, which it says cuts across its security and diplomatic red lines.
Israel’s government has officially said that the Trump administration’s announcement of the Gaza Executive Board was “not coordinated with Israel” and is “against the policy of the government of Israel.” This reflects both procedural anger at being presented with a fait accompli and substantive concern about the board’s mandate over Gaza’s future.
Israeli officials are especially alarmed by the inclusion and expected roles of Qatar and Turkey, two governments that maintain close ties with Hamas and are routinely accused in Israel of providing political or financial cover to the group. For Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition figures alike, empowering such actors inside the core executive structure looks like institutionalizing the influence of states they view as hostile.
Beyond specific names, Israel sees a structural risk: an internationally engineered board that can constrain Israeli security freedom of action without guaranteeing the dismantling of Hamas or other armed groups in Gaza. Even Israeli critics of Netanyahu argue that any arrangement that does not place Israel at the center of security decision‑making is unlikely to be politically sustainable inside Israel.
Why Palestinian Actors Object
On the Palestinian side, objections are driven by the sense that the entire framework is being imposed over Palestinians rather than negotiated with them, reinforcing a long‑standing pattern of external management of their political future.
Hamas has publicly rejected the idea of a US‑chaired “Board of Peace” to oversee Gaza’s administration, with senior official Osama Hamdan saying that “no Palestinian would accept this.” From Hamas’s perspective, a board chaired by the US president and stacked with Western and regional elites amounts to international trusteeship designed to bypass Palestinian resistance movements and dilute Palestinian claims to self‑determination.
The Trump plan’s reliance on a technocratic NCAG and international oversight sidelines the Palestinian Authority (PA) as well, which has historically claimed to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. For Ramallah, a Gaza governance architecture built in Washington and New York, with Palestinian technocrats selected under foreign auspices, risks entrenching Palestinian fragmentation and diminishing the PA’s own role.
Many Palestinians also see the Board of Peace as being launched without a comprehensive political framework addressing core final‑status issues such as statehood, borders, refugees, Jerusalem, and prisoners. In their view, prioritizing administrative boards and donor‑driven reconstruction without a negotiated end to occupation repeats a familiar cycle: managing the conflict rather than resolving it, and doing so largely over their heads.
The Deeper Structural Problem
The symmetry in Israeli and Palestinian objections is not about shared goals, but about a shared rejection of being treated as accessories to someone else’s blueprint. Israel fears a framework that dilutes its strategic control and security doctrine, while Palestinians fear a framework that cements their subordination and strips them of political agency.
Both sides read the Board of Peace as an externally curated “governance experiment” in Gaza that can proceed even in the absence of a bilateral ceasefire, a clear disarmament roadmap, or mutually agreed security guarantees. That perception feeds Israeli suspicions that Washington and other capitals are trying to dictate outcomes, and Palestinian suspicions that the same capitals are trying to normalize an indefinite, internationally managed status quo.
Why Peace Needs Both Parties
Trump’s Board of Peace and its Gaza Executive Board illustrate a recurring temptation in international diplomacy: when the parties are intransigent, outsiders try to engineer structures that “solve” the problem for them. These mechanisms can sometimes freeze violence or channel money, but they cannot manufacture legitimacy where neither side accepts the architecture as its own.
A durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians requires, at minimum, a framework in which both parties negotiate and consent to the institutions that will govern borders, security, and rights. Without that participation, even the most elaborate board, committee, or roadmap will remain what Trump’s Gaza “Board of Peace” currently is for both sides: an externally imposed design that may manage the conflict at the margins, but cannot resolve it. In that sense, Israel’s and Palestine’s objections are a reminder of a basic political truth: peace cannot be reached around the parties; it can only be reached with them.
