Dozens of world leaders and national delegations will meet in Washington DC on Thursday for the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, as major European allies declined to join the group and criticised the organisation’s murky funding and political mandate.
The White House initiative received another blow this week as Pope Leo XIV announced that the Vatican would not join the board
The meeting instead will be attended by Middle Eastern delegations, including from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar, along with a bevy of international states with little direct engagement in the conflict in Gaza, from Argentina and Paraguay to Hungary to Kazakhstan.
The board was initially formed with the reconstruction of Gaza as its stated primary goal, though its mandate has since been widened by Trump to include responding to other global conflicts.
But, despite Trump’s characteristic bombast, the Board of Peace summit will open to heavy scepticism, with expectations limited both for Thursday’s meeting in Washington and in the Middle East, where the 100-day peace and recovery plan announced by Jared Kushner in Davos has stalled and aid into Gaza remains at a trickle.
Fifteen members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a body of technocrats established under Trump’s plan, are waiting in Cairo, anxious to show rapid improvements in living standards to the people of Gaza, but lack the tools to get anything done.
