The Board of Trump

So they’ve launched this “Gaza Board of Peace”, with a charter signed at Davos, and I’m genuinely trying to judge it on what it is, not who’s fronting it.

But the charter, as reported, doesn’t even mention Gaza. Not once. You can argue that charters are meant to be broad, fine. Even so, if you’re selling this as a Gaza-focused peace and reconstruction mechanism, leaving Gaza out of the founding text is a glaring tell. It suggests the real aim is a general-purpose power platform, with Gaza as the launch vehicle.

Then there’s the structure. Membership by invitation, renewals at the chairman’s discretion, decisions needing the chairman’s approval, and the chairman as final interpreter of the rules. If that’s accurate, it isn’t a rules-based institution, it’s a leader-based one. That matters because peacebuilding is supposed to be stable and predictable, not dependent on one person’s judgement, temperament, or political incentives.

And yes, this is how you undermine existing institutions in practice without openly declaring war on them. You don’t need to “abolish” the UN. You just create a rival body that can bypass constraints, claim it’s faster and more effective, then start routing legitimacy, money and influence away from the established system. It’s not reform. It’s displacement.

Now look at representation, because this is where “peace” either becomes credible or collapses into theatre.

Netanyahu on a Gaza peace board is an immediate conflict-of-interest problem. He is a direct party to the conflict, with domestic political incentives tied to the outcome. You can’t call that neutral oversight, it’s a stakeholder sitting in the referee’s chair.

And if the Palestinian Authority isn’t represented on the board itself, that’s lop-sided from the start. You can argue the PA is flawed, unpopular, or weak in Gaza, but excluding the recognised Palestinian political authority from top-level decision-making while including the Israeli PM isn’t “pragmatism”. It’s signalling who this is designed to serve.

Putin’s inclusion, if accurate, makes it worse. Diplomacy involves talking to adversaries, yes. But putting an expansionist war leader on a “peace” board is not the same thing as negotiating with him. It’s granting status. It says the board’s currency is transactional legitimacy, not principles, law, or accountability.

Then there’s the reported “permanent membership” model - a billion dollars for a permanent seat. If true, that’s a pay-to-play structure. Call it “funding” if you like, but the effect is the same: money buys influence, and influence shapes outcomes. That’s not a foundation for trust in a post-war settlement. It’s a recipe for capture.

And before anyone says “give Trump a chance, he wants peace” - this is the same Trump who has openly threatened to use force against a sovereign country to take territory. That isn’t peace. That’s imperialism with better PR. If your chairman’s idea of diplomacy includes invasion as a negotiating tool, then “Board of Peace” starts sounding like one of those Ministry of Truth jokes.

And then there’s Tony Blair, dutifully turning up like a man who can smell a conference lanyard from 500 miles away. He’s being used as a credibility prop, and he knows it. The whole point of wheeling Blair on stage is so everyone can say “look, serious people are involved”, while the structure underneath remains a Trump-centred power project. Blair will tell himself he’s “helping” and “influencing”, but what he’s really doing is lending his remaining reputation to a scheme that desperately needs a grown-up mask. It’s the same old Blair habit - mistaking proximity to power for virtue, and confusing being present with being useful.

Finally, there’s the obvious political incentive hovering over it: Trump wants to be seen as the man who “brought peace”. Maybe he even wants the Nobel. Fine. Motives don’t always matter if outcomes are good. But when the entire project is built around optics, personal control, and headline-grabbing scale, you’re entitled to suspect the outcome is secondary.

If this board wants credibility, it needs three things: clear Gaza-specific mandate, balanced representation, and constraints that stop it becoming a one-man instrument. Without that, to use Trump’s favourite phrase, it’s a Fake Board. It's a pattern. And you just have to follow the dots to know where Trump shaped patterns lead.