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The conversation about the future of the Gaza Strip is stuck in a false dichotomy.
On the one hand, for an entire year, Israel has prevented any progress towards reconstruction while continuing to blockade Gaza, carry out attacks, and extend its direct control over more and more territory, where it is actively erasing the physical traces of Palestinian life.
On the other, Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has put forward grand visions for redevelopment that are entirely disconnected from Gaza’s past and present as well as preliminary plans for stabilisation that lack any viable path for implementation.
Yet, because the UN Security Council gave the Board of Peace an indefinite mandate to oversee what comes next in Gaza, humanitarians, diplomats, and others in the international community advocating for an end to the untenable status quo find themselves de facto advocating for the Board of Peace to be able to act.
Those interested in constructively engaging on Gaza are seemingly left with a pernicious choice: accept Israel’s continued occupation and destruction of Gaza and its people, or either explicitly or implicitly support the Board of Peace.
One clear example of this came during UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s September speech announcing a tougher policy stance toward Israel. Hidden behind headline grabbing announcements about sanctions on illegal West Bank settlements, Miliband’s main point of action on Gaza was saying that the UK would lend its “voice to the growing global alliance of countries… calling for the full implementation of the US-led 20 point plan”.
There are ample concerns in the international community about the Board of Peace, from it being Trump’s personal fiefdom over which he holds the position of chairman for life to his not so subtle ambition to see it rival the UN. After voting last November for the Security Council resolution giving the Board its authority over Gaza, the UK declined to join.
But implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which formed the basis of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, is exactly the Board’s mandate. So, in essence, Miliband was calling for the Board to be able to begin implementing its plans for Gaza without explicitly endorsing the institution itself.
The EU and its most powerful member states have charted a similar course, declining to join while gingerly engaging – and in some cases beginning to work – with the Board.
When it comes to humanitarians, organisations are constrained by Israel’s weaponisation of aid access, and many have been almost entirely silent about their concerns. Implicit criticism has come in the form of calling for a rights-based approach to reconstruction. Any direct criticism has focused on calling out the Board’s failure to implement anything on the ground and its absence of engagement with established NGOs working in Gaza.
After a year of stalled or blocked actions, it does not appear that the Board’s plans are likely to go anywhere – and certainly not anywhere good for Palestinians.
The main public advocacy points for humanitarians over the past year have been for Israel to actually adhere to the ceasefire, to end its ongoing obstruction of aid access, and to allow reconstruction to begin. Because of the Security Council resolution, calls for reconstruction to begin are implicitly calls for the Board of Peace to be able to carry out its mandate.
UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher recently said this explicitly, telling CNN: “We have a Security Council resolution that mandates us to work with the Board of Peace and to try and see that progress.”
After a year of stalled or blocked actions, it does not appear that the Board’s plans are likely to go anywhere – and certainly not anywhere good for Palestinians. But few are willing to say that out loud or propose a different path forward. Regardless of concerns about the merits of the Board’s plans for Gaza – or about the institution itself – there is, it seems, no other show in town.
To accept this, however, is a trap. The conversation about Gaza’s future cannot be limited to either the visions of Israel or of the Board of Peace. It must be led by the needs, priorities, hopes, and rights of Palestinians, especially those in Gaza – and by what they are entitled to under international law.
Visions of the future
The need for change in Gaza is immense. With no progress towards reconstruction, daily life is suspended in an intolerable state of limbo. Three years into what a plurality of human rights groups, international legaI experts, and scholars of the subject have deemed to be a genocide, Israel’s vision for the future of Gaza is clear.
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At a minimum, Israel has demonstrated that it is intent on indefinitely continuing the status quo of occupation, blockade, and license to commit violence at will. Ministers in the current Israeli government have also called for the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Gaza at numerous points over the past three years – a goal that was proposed and recommended as early as 13 October 2023.
Israel is holding elections on 27 October, and the campaign leading up to them is often cited as a reason why the government has so far blocked the Board of Peace from implementing any projects on the ground. Regardless of the outcome, however, there is no indication that either current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any of the candidates vying to replace him will offer a substantively different path forward.
By comparison, the Board of Peace – with its mandate to oversee the “redevelopment” of Gaza for “the benefit of” its people – appears to be a preferable alternative.
But the grand vision it has put forward of Gaza as a destination for high-end tourism and business, replete with high-tech cities and towering skyscrapers by the sea, is an outsider’s fantasy. If it were to be built, it would be on top of the rubble of a destroyed civilisation with no consideration of what came before it and without an apparent place for the enclave’s 2.1 million current residents.
The Board’s recently announced plans for an initial six-month reconstruction phase are perhaps more practical and potentially beneficial for Palestinians. They focus on providing housing, repairing infrastructure, removing rubble, and restarting Gaza’s economy – all dire needs.
If they are actually implemented, the plans would also see the deployment of an International Stabilization Force and the withdrawal of the Israeli military – a development Palestinians in Gaza would surely welcome.
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Sides of the same coin
As writer Hassan Herzallah recently wrote in The New Humanitarian, Palestinians in Gaza have been forced into a position of such desperation that there is seemingly a willingness to accept anything that may even marginally improve their conditions of life, including the Board of Peace. But to believe that the Board is genuinely working for the benefit of the people of Gaza would be a giant, unfounded leap of faith.
There is little to no reason to believe that the Board’s four key stakeholders – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair – are genuinely working for the benefit of the people of Gaza in any way that would be recognisable to Palestinians.
The Board does contain a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza composed of Palestinian technocrats, giving it a veneer of representation. But the National Committee lacks independence, democratic legitimacy, and any real power.
In the best-case scenario, its members are Palestinians who have the best interests of people in Gaza in mind, and who are attempting to steer the development of the Board of Peace’s plans in a direction that will benefit the population. More realistically, it is a fig leaf that cannot hope to cover up the Board’s substantial flaws.
Without addressing these underlying issues, the differences between the Israeli- and Board of Peace-defined futures dissolve into the same path forward – a perpetuation of the status quo of occupation and the denial of rights.
Fundamentally, the Board of Peace separates the conversation about Gaza’s future from the broader question of Palestine. Trump’s 20-point peace plan says that Israel “will not occupy or annex Gaza”, but it makes no mention of the West Bank. The question of Palestinian self-determination is kicked indefinitely down the line to some point in the future when “the conditions may finally be in place”. There is no mention of Palestinian rights or of justice and restitution, let alone recognition of Israeli crimes.
Can there really be a path forward in Gaza that would benefit its people without addressing, or even acknowledging, the underlying causes of their suffering, namely Israel’s colonisation and subjugation of Palestinians?
Without addressing these underlying issues, the differences between the Israeli- and Board of Peace-defined futures dissolve into the same path forward – a perpetuation of the status quo of occupation and the denial of rights.
Yet, this is the path the international community has endorsed, and that it continues to explicitly or implicitly support.
Another way forward
There is, however, another way forward, one that puts Palestinians at the centre of the discussion about their own future and that is grounded in rights and international law.
The Gaza Phoenix initiative and Oxfam International have published frameworks for Palestinian-led approaches to recovery and reconstruction. Property rights, continuity of culture and heritage, justice, and the right of Palestinian self-determination – all completely absent from the Board of Peace’s vision – factor prominently in both.
The New Humanitarian has also been talking to Palestinians about what they want for Gaza’s future. Their answers have been clear: reconstruction led by Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, that addresses their immediate, dire needs and that is grounded in justice, safety, and human dignity.
Shahed ElAssy, a 20-year-old law student in Gaza, summed it up well: “I don’t measure a human future through commercial projects built over our trauma… Before anyone offers us economic plans, we need the fundamental right to live freely without fear of displacement or blockade.”
It may be easier for people in positions of power – whether in governments, international organisations, or NGOs – to carry on along the current path of ambiguity to avoid incurring Trump’s wrath. Being able to call for the 20-point peace plan to be implemented and for Israel to allow reconstruction to begin has also become a convenient substitute for meaningful action to actually address the underlying issues causing Gaza’s suffering.
But Donald Trump won’t be president of the US forever. When he’s no longer in office, will the international community really continue to accept him as leader of the Board of Peace for life? And when the levers of American power are no longer in his hands, will the UN still grant a fundamentally flawed institution stacked with his close confidantes control over Gaza’s future?
At a bare minimum, people who see the picture clearly need to try to break the conversation out of the false dichotomy in which it is currently stuck. The stakes of continuing down the current path are far too high.
