With each new detail, it now sounds actively misleading.
Peace, under any serious definition, requires consent, accountability, and representation. This board offers none of the three. Instead, it concentrates power in the hands of political and financial figures far removed from Gaza, while excluding Palestinians from meaningful authority over their own future.
At the top of the structure sits Donald Trump, with Jared Kushner playing a central architectural role. Their approach to conflict has long favored leverage, securitization, and deal-making over rights and self-determination. Previous “economic peace” proposals explicitly sidelined Palestinian political agency, offering investment frameworks in place of sovereignty. The Gaza board reflects the same philosophy: development without democracy, rebuilding without consent.
To understand why this matters, it is necessary to look not only at Gaza, but at how this administration has exercised power elsewhere — including at home.
In the United States, under this same leadership, federal immigration agents have fatally shot American civilians during enforcement operations, with the administration defending those killings under contested self-defense claims even as video evidence and local officials raised serious questions. Oversight has been resisted, independent investigations delayed, and criticism framed as hostility to “law and order” itself. The message is clear: coercive force first, accountability later — if at all.
That governing logic has extended beyond U.S. borders and onto the open sea. In late 2025, U.S. forces conducting maritime counter-narcotics operations killed individuals aboard vessels designated as suspected drug-smuggling boats. Subsequent reporting revealed a serious internal controversy over a follow-up strike in which survivors from an initial attack were reportedly killed. Senior officials, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, publicly denied giving any unlawful order to open fire on survivors, while anonymous military and defence sources told journalists that such an order had been issued or implicitly authorized. The administration defended the overall campaign as lawful, but the episode exposed a familiar pattern: lethal force deployed, responsibility disputed, and accountability absorbed into a fog of denials rather than clarified through transparent, independent review.
That same pattern is visible in the administration’s actions toward Venezuela. U.S. forces have seized multiple oil tankers carrying Venezuelan crude in international waters, rerouting or confiscating them under sanctions and enforcement authorities. These actions were publicly justified as economic pressure and law-enforcement measures, even as senior U.S. officials openly acknowledged that the broader objective was to deprive the Venezuelan state of revenue and enable American access to its energy resources. While defended as lawful by Washington, the practice has been described by legal scholars and international observers as indistinguishable from maritime coercion: the use of naval power to expropriate another state’s resources without judicial process. When resource seizure becomes policy, the distinction between enforcement and piracy becomes a matter of power rather than principle.
This is the context in which the same administration now claims authority to shape Gaza’s future.
The inclusion of Benjamin Netanyahu on the Board of Peace deepens the legitimacy crisis. His government has consistently defended the killing of Palestinians, both during major military operations and in daily enforcement across the occupied territories. International organizations, UN bodies, and Israeli human rights groups have documented repeated cases in which Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces with little or no meaningful accountability.
This pattern is not limited to large-scale warfare. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinian farmers and communities is extensively documented: attacks during olive harvests, destruction of property, intimidation, and land seizures. These acts frequently occur with impunity and, in some cases, in the presence or protection of Israeli forces. At the same time, Netanyahu’s government has continued to authorize and expand illegal settlements, including recent announcements of new construction and the retroactive legalization of outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land. Violence clears the ground; policy formalizes the theft.
The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces reinforces these concerns. While Israeli authorities point to internal accountability mechanisms, those processes have been widely criticized by human rights organizations as opaque and ineffective. Investigations are slow, prosecutions rare, and convictions rarer still — creating what critics describe as a system that performs accountability without delivering justice.
Alongside Netanyahu sit figures such as Tony Blair, whose post-conflict governance record emphasizes security coordination and market-led development while deferring responsibility for past harm. Financial leadership on the board includes Ajay Banga, whose experience in global finance is tied to compliance and sanctions regimes that human rights groups have long criticized for disproportionately restricting humanitarian access in Muslim-majority contexts. There is no evidence of personal religious animus; the concern is structural. In Gaza, where aid access is already precarious, such frameworks risk turning reconstruction into another instrument of control.
What unites these figures is not accountability to Gaza’s people, but experience administering populations from above.
Palestinians themselves are excluded from the board’s highest decision-making authority. Advisory or technocratic bodies may exist downstream, but real power — mandates, money, enforcement — flows from an external executive dominated by those who have enabled, excused, or directly overseen Palestinian suffering.
Peace does not work this way.
A government that defends lethal force against civilians at home, denies responsibility for deadly operations at sea, and openly seizes another nation’s resources cannot plausibly present itself as a steward of peace. A board that excludes the governed, launders reputations, and substitutes control for consent is not a peace project — it is a management strategy.
If power can be exercised with such impunity in Minneapolis, in international waters, or against a sovereign state’s resources, it will not suddenly become benevolent in Gaza. And with Netanyahu on the board, Palestinians are being asked to trust the very system that has spent decades justifying their deaths and dispossession.
Calling this a “Board of Peace” does not make it one. It only exposes how far removed it is from peace itself.
Peace, under any serious definition, requires consent, accountability, and representation. This board offers none of the three. Instead, it concentrates power in the hands of political and financial figures far removed from Gaza, while excluding Palestinians from meaningful authority over their own future.
At the top of the structure sits Donald Trump, with Jared Kushner playing a central architectural role. Their approach to conflict has long favored leverage, securitization, and deal-making over rights and self-determination. Previous “economic peace” proposals explicitly sidelined Palestinian political agency, offering investment frameworks in place of sovereignty. The Gaza board reflects the same philosophy: development without democracy, rebuilding without consent.
To understand why this matters, it is necessary to look not only at Gaza, but at how this administration has exercised power elsewhere — including at home.
In the United States, under this same leadership, federal immigration agents have fatally shot American civilians during enforcement operations, with the administration defending those killings under contested self-defense claims even as video evidence and local officials raised serious questions. Oversight has been resisted, independent investigations delayed, and criticism framed as hostility to “law and order” itself. The message is clear: coercive force first, accountability later — if at all.
That governing logic has extended beyond U.S. borders and onto the open sea. In late 2025, U.S. forces conducting maritime counter-narcotics operations killed individuals aboard vessels designated as suspected drug-smuggling boats. Subsequent reporting revealed a serious internal controversy over a follow-up strike in which survivors from an initial attack were reportedly killed. Senior officials, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, publicly denied giving any unlawful order to open fire on survivors, while anonymous military and defence sources told journalists that such an order had been issued or implicitly authorized. The administration defended the overall campaign as lawful, but the episode exposed a familiar pattern: lethal force deployed, responsibility disputed, and accountability absorbed into a fog of denials rather than clarified through transparent, independent review.
That same pattern is visible in the administration’s actions toward Venezuela. U.S. forces have seized multiple oil tankers carrying Venezuelan crude in international waters, rerouting or confiscating them under sanctions and enforcement authorities. These actions were publicly justified as economic pressure and law-enforcement measures, even as senior U.S. officials openly acknowledged that the broader objective was to deprive the Venezuelan state of revenue and enable American access to its energy resources. While defended as lawful by Washington, the practice has been described by legal scholars and international observers as indistinguishable from maritime coercion: the use of naval power to expropriate another state’s resources without judicial process. When resource seizure becomes policy, the distinction between enforcement and piracy becomes a matter of power rather than principle.
This is the context in which the same administration now claims authority to shape Gaza’s future.
The inclusion of Benjamin Netanyahu on the Board of Peace deepens the legitimacy crisis. His government has consistently defended the killing of Palestinians, both during major military operations and in daily enforcement across the occupied territories. International organizations, UN bodies, and Israeli human rights groups have documented repeated cases in which Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces with little or no meaningful accountability.
This pattern is not limited to large-scale warfare. In the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinian farmers and communities is extensively documented: attacks during olive harvests, destruction of property, intimidation, and land seizures. These acts frequently occur with impunity and, in some cases, in the presence or protection of Israeli forces. At the same time, Netanyahu’s government has continued to authorize and expand illegal settlements, including recent announcements of new construction and the retroactive legalization of outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land. Violence clears the ground; policy formalizes the theft.
The conduct of the Israel Defense Forces reinforces these concerns. While Israeli authorities point to internal accountability mechanisms, those processes have been widely criticized by human rights organizations as opaque and ineffective. Investigations are slow, prosecutions rare, and convictions rarer still — creating what critics describe as a system that performs accountability without delivering justice.
Alongside Netanyahu sit figures such as Tony Blair, whose post-conflict governance record emphasizes security coordination and market-led development while deferring responsibility for past harm. Financial leadership on the board includes Ajay Banga, whose experience in global finance is tied to compliance and sanctions regimes that human rights groups have long criticized for disproportionately restricting humanitarian access in Muslim-majority contexts. There is no evidence of personal religious animus; the concern is structural. In Gaza, where aid access is already precarious, such frameworks risk turning reconstruction into another instrument of control.
What unites these figures is not accountability to Gaza’s people, but experience administering populations from above.
Palestinians themselves are excluded from the board’s highest decision-making authority. Advisory or technocratic bodies may exist downstream, but real power — mandates, money, enforcement — flows from an external executive dominated by those who have enabled, excused, or directly overseen Palestinian suffering.
Peace does not work this way.
A government that defends lethal force against civilians at home, denies responsibility for deadly operations at sea, and openly seizes another nation’s resources cannot plausibly present itself as a steward of peace. A board that excludes the governed, launders reputations, and substitutes control for consent is not a peace project — it is a management strategy.
If power can be exercised with such impunity in Minneapolis, in international waters, or against a sovereign state’s resources, it will not suddenly become benevolent in Gaza. And with Netanyahu on the board, Palestinians are being asked to trust the very system that has spent decades justifying their deaths and dispossession.
Calling this a “Board of Peace” does not make it one. It only exposes how far removed it is from peace itself.
⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.
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