Trump’s “Board of Peace” and the Human Cost of Running Nations
Even as we struggle to fully understand Donald Trump’s rapacious need to “run” Venezuela and to threaten control of Greenland, Cuba and Colombia, we have the murky stew that is Gaza still before us.
Trump has taken many bows for bringing “the dawn of long-term peace” to the Middle East, as he insists on retelling us at every opportunity. He was named the head of the “Board of Peace” to make conflict disappear, to disarm Hamas, to bring about restoration of a life for Gazans and security for Israel.
Trump is in charge — by his own hand and by invitation of Gulf nations and Israel. So, how’s it going? If Venezuela and the other international conflicts for which Trump credits himself are to be a success, wouldn’t we see it in Gaza first? Might we get an idea of what it means for Trump to “run,” “own,” or otherwise take responsibility for whole countries by seeing things work in Gaza?
Three months or more after announcing lasting peace, we still have chaos in Gaza. Hamas fighters still have weapons and are said to be re-arming, and it has refused to return the body of a remaining dead hostage. Israel has bisected Gaza into an occupied zone, with hundreds of trucks a day bringing in food and medicine. And prospects of normality amid devastation are iffy at best. Gazan civilians remain cold, hungry and under siege from both sides.
Despite “ceasefire,” hundreds of Hamas fighters have been killed in the last two months, Israeli bombs nearly daily, and the Israeli government is extending provocative settlement land grabs in the West Bank, threatening Iran, and skirmishing in Syria and Lebanon. No other nation wants to send ground troops to disarm Hamas, and inside the Israeli government, the right-wingers are calling for renewed war.
Despite a Trump administration eagerness for progress on postwar plans, there is little to show.
The Board of Peace Appointments
This week’s news was that Trump named his supervising Board of Peace, a group meant to choose a “technocratic” Palestinian government with no one from Hamas, and its main supporting committees. The names included mostly Americans, including Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, Trump pal Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Mario Rubio, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, representatives from Qatar and Egypt, and possibly Canadian and Argentine leaders.
Stretching credulity, the Kremlin reported that Vladimir Putin had been offered an invitation to join this Board of Peace, CNC said. In fact, Trump is offering to invite other countries to a permanent seat – if they pay a billion dollars in cash in the first year, according to a draft of the board’s charter reviewed by The New York Times.
Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian former envoy to the Middle East, was chosen as a kind of director-general, a link between the Board of Peace and a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which does include Palestinians. Mladenov will support the board’s oversight of all aspects of Gaza’s governance, reconstruction, and development, said The Jerusalem Post.
It is unclear who exactly will address health, social services, education, housing, agriculture and food– foundational building blocks or how an interim government would work.
There was one Israeli businessman included on one committee, but no Board of Peace seat for Israel or Gaza, and there is no one from the Palestinian Authority – a strange way to set up for a post-Hamas era with “lasting peace.”.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was angry enough to make public his displeasure with the omission and with the inclusion of Erdogan, not a supporter of Israel, or even a consultation with him. Netanyahu is dealing with ministers in his own government who want to denude Gaza of Palestinians and start Jewish settlements there.
Axios reported that Trump’s advisers have little patience for Netanyahu’s objections, quoting a senior White House official as saying, “This is our show, not his show. We managed to do things in Gaza in recent months nobody thought was possible, and we are going to continue moving.”
Appointment of the board was the official start of “Phase 2,” despite fact that Phase 1 never was completed. No country wants its ground troops used to force promised disarmament of Hamas.
What’s the Real Goal?
Without progress by this Board of Peace, the Middle East wars will resume, of course.
The Board of Peace activity is being dictated by the Trump White House, which clearly cares more about creating a “Riviera of the Middle East” in Gaza than a safe nation for Palestinians, whom Trump has invited to leave, and Israel’s security.
More broadly, when Trump talks about Venezuela, he talks about its oil resources as if that is the country. He does not address street violence or food and medicine shortages or the inability to make a living. Indeed, Trump continues to deport Venezuelans from America, the very Venezuelans he insists are criminals, mental patients and drug-smugglers.
Maybe we all could agree that this Trump view of countries without concern about their people is at least strange, if not dangerous.
Meanwhile, has Trump and his newfound friends in what remains of the Nicolás Maduro regime moved against drug cartels or stopped the smuggling that Trump had insisted was rampant and state-sponsored? Has the White House “running” of Venezuela included any moves against outlaw gangs and paramilitary roaming bands? For that matter, has any of the sale of seized oil from tankers leaving Venezuela helped buy food or medicines?
What Gaza tells us is that Trump’s measure of success being set for “peace” has little to do with the fate of the people who live there or even those living directly across an arbitrary and moving border. What Gaza does tell us is that “running” a country for Trump means keeping power for its own sake, but not towards achieving a goal that satisfies Palestinians, Israelis, or anyone but business developers.
Trump’s measure of success is about cash and business – again – and not democracy, security or the ability of the affected people to thrive.
OUR INDEPENDENT FREE VOICE NEEDS YOU SUPPORT. PLEASE CONSIDER A DONATION TODAY.
