US President Donald Trump has formally announced the charter of the so-called Peace Commission, an international dispute resolution body with a $1 billion price tag for permanent membership.
The board, which President Trump launched Thursday at a signing ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, was originally conceived to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza after Israel’s more than two years of genocidal war there.
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But the council, which never mentions Gaza in its 11-page charter, appears to have become more ambitious after U.S. leaders said it could expand its work to other global crises, a role traditionally played by the United Nations.
“Once this board is fully formed, we can do almost anything we want to do,” President Trump argued on stage at the World Economic Forum before signing the document formalizing the initiative. They were joined on stage by leaders, foreign ministers and other senior officials representing 19 other countries, including Argentina, Qatar, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Hungary, Morocco, Bahrain, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Some fear that a peace commission will weaken the United Nations. President Trump appeared to address those concerns in his opening remarks at the ceremony, saying the initiative “works with many other countries, including the United Nations,” and listed other important diplomatic issues around the world.
“I’ve always said that the United Nations has tremendous potential, but we’re not taking advantage of it,” Trump said.
He praised the efforts of U.S. officials involved in the project to establish a ceasefire in Gaza. “We brought peace to the Middle East. No one thought it was possible.”
He added that the board would be “very successful in Gaza” and that “if we are successful in Gaza, we will be able to branch out into other things.”
“Action Committee”
In remarks after Trump’s remarks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the council’s priority is to ensure the continuation of the ceasefire in Gaza, but that the organization’s potential is “limitless.”
“This is not just a peace commission. This is a commission of action, just as President Trump is a president of action,” he said.
“This is a group of action-oriented leaders.”
President Trump’s son-in-law, White House senior adviser and real estate developer Jared Kushner outlined the details of the peace committee’s Gaza development plan, without mentioning any plans for a path to Palestinian statehood.
“The most important thing is security. Obviously, we are working very closely with the Israeli side to find ways to de-escalate tensions. The next step is to work with Hamas on demilitarization,” Kushner said.
“If there is no safety, no one will invest there, no one will come to build there. We need investment to provide jobs,” he said.
Pointing to a map that divided Gaza into “residential” and “coastal tourism mixed” zones, Kushner said the peace committee wanted to use “free market principles” to wean Gaza off its dependence on foreign aid.
Mr. Kushner said the plan includes building 100,000 homes in Rafah and the “new Gaza,” and showed a rendering of high-rise towers along the coast.
“In the Middle East, we’re building cities like this with 2 million, 3 million people in three years, so something like this is very doable if we do it,” Kushner said.
He urged both sides of the Gaza conflict to “do their best to cooperate” and called for a change in “thinking” and “behavior” in the region.
“Everyone wants to live in peace,” he said. “Peace really is possible if we believe it is possible.”
The event also featured Ali Shas, the future head of the technocratic Palestinian government in Gaza, who announced that the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza would open in both directions next week.
“The most prestigious board in history”
The peace committee will be chaired by Trump and headed by a founding executive council that includes Rubio, Kushner, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, U.S. Vice Presidential Security Advisor Robert Gabriel, World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, and Mark Rowan, CEO of investment firm Apollo Global Management.
According to reports, 50 to 60 countries have been invited to join the council, and up to 25 have agreed to sign.
Trump would need to contribute $1 billion to become a permanent member of the board, which he calls “the most prestigious board ever established.” US officials reportedly said that countries are expected to contribute to Gaza’s reconstruction efforts, but that such contributions are voluntary.
The foreign ministers of Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Qatar announced their participation in the council in a joint statement on Wednesday. Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also announced that it had accepted President Trump’s invitation.
Other countries that have agreed to participate include Morocco, Argentina, Hungary, Armenia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Belarus. China, India, Japan, Thailand and many European countries have not yet accepted the invitation.
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Britain refused to sign on Thursday, joining a growing European list of refusals that includes France, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia.
UK’s ‘concerns’ about President Putin
Asked about Trump’s board, Cooper told the BBC that the UK is “concerned that President (Vladimir) Putin is part of something that talks about peace when we have yet to see any sign of a commitment from him to peace in Ukraine.”
Questions have been raised about why other leaders wanted for war crimes, including the Russian president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were invited to the board, and what powers the board would give Trump as its first president.
David Waring, a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex, told Al Jazeera that the council was “clearly an attempt to make the United Nations obsolete” and to place Trump in “a kind of monarchical or imperial position as the head of this new UN”.
Russian state media reported Thursday that President Putin is prepared to transfer $1 billion to a peace committee to support the Palestinian people, and that the U.S. government has discussed using frozen Russian assets to fund the transfer.
Putin, who was scheduled to meet Palestinian Authority President Abbas in Moscow on Thursday, said he was still consulting Moscow’s “strategic partners” before deciding to get involved.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to join the council after he had previously criticized the composition of the subordinate Palestinian technical expert committee tasked with monitoring Gaza.
However, there is no Palestinian representative on the Peace Council.
Palestinians in Gaza are overlooked
Reporting from Gaza on Thursday, Al Jazeera’s Tarek Abu Azwom said Palestinians in Gaza were becoming less optimistic about the initiative as multiple countries joined.
“There is a deep-rooted sense among Palestinians that Palestinians are being discussed as a problem to be managed, rather than as a people with rights that should be fully addressed,” Abu Azzum said.
“I believe that people on the ground feel that the establishment of a new peace committee is out of touch with their reality.”
He added that Palestinians “feel that opening a new chapter is not as easy as Americans think.”
In remarks Thursday, President Trump praised the amount of aid that has flowed into the Gaza Strip since the cease-fire agreement, but the remarks were at odds with the reality on the ground, as the United Nations and international aid agencies repeatedly warn of severe shortages of food, water, medicine and other supplies entering the enclave.
