The Trump administration recently declared that Phase 1 of the cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel was over and that the work of Phase 2 would begin. This came as a surprise to Palestinians, and to many observers of the region, given that none of the 20 points in the plan laid out at the beginning of the cease-fire had been realized on the ground—aside from the return of Israeli hostages.

For instance, Israel has allowed some aid in—but not at the levels required to offset hunger and malnutrition or to sustain reconstruction. Violence has not ended either; since the cease-fire was announced last October, more than 480 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 100 children, and thousands more injured in Israeli attacks. Most recently, three journalists were killed in what a relief group described as a targeted attack.

The Trump administration recently declared that Phase 1 of the cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel was over and that the work of Phase 2 would begin. This came as a surprise to Palestinians, and to many observers of the region, given that none of the 20 points in the plan laid out at the beginning of the cease-fire had been realized on the ground—aside from the return of Israeli hostages.

For instance, Israel has allowed some aid in—but not at the levels required to offset hunger and malnutrition or to sustain reconstruction. Violence has not ended either; since the cease-fire was announced last October, more than 480 Palestinians have been killed, including at least 100 children, and thousands more injured in Israeli attacks. Most recently, three journalists were killed in what a relief group described as a targeted attack.

Moreover, Gaza has been reduced in size, with a new “yellow line” demarcating where Israeli troops will remain for now, and Israel continues to push the yellow line further into what remains of Gaza. This so far accounts for more than 50 percent of the strip. In that portion, “access to humanitarian facilities and assets, public infrastructure and agricultural land are either restricted or prohibited” to Palestinians, according to the United Nations.

Despite all this, a slew of invitations has gone out to world leaders and wealthy billionaires to join U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. On paper, the Board of Peace is intended to “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” The subordinate Executive Board is intended to run the strip and its “technocratic government” made up of Palestinian bureaucrats. This board is one aspect of the plan laid out for Gaza’s future—the “Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation” (GREAT) plan—that will turn the occupied territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

For each world leader invited to the board, Trump has set a billion-dollar price tag for permanent participation. Those who have accepted the invitation thus far include members of Trump’s own cabinet; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair; Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; and Israeli Cypriot billionaire Yakir Gabay. Trump has extended invitations to the far-right presidents of Hungary and Argentina—Viktor Orban and Javier Milei—and to dictators Aleksandr Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin, despite his invasion of Ukraine. France, the United Kingdom, and other major powers have expressed reservations about their invitations, citing Putin’s involvement and the way the board seems to undermine the role of the U.N. as the basis of international law and interstate conflict resolution. Trump initially invited Canada as well, before withdrawing the invitation on social media.

The invitation letter, shared on social media by Orban, is quite telling. In the letter, Trump refers to the Board of Peace as a “bold new approach to resolving Global Conflict.” As one anonymous diplomat put it to Reuters, “It’s a ‘Trump United Nations’ that ignores the fundamentals of the U.N. charter.” Indeed, the Board of Peace charter does not mention human rights, nor does it mention Gaza explicitly, clarifying the intent to apply the board’s mechanisms to future conflicts.

Despite its name, however, the Board of Peace is not intended to resolve conflict. Rather, it is a form of authoritarian conflict management, subduing war through repressive means. This mode of conflict management means leaving the root causes of conflict unaddressed, ignoring reconciliation or reparations, and dismissing the agency of the peoples involved in the conflict to begin with. And as a tool of authoritarian conflict management, the Board of Peace arguably upholds three basic principles: Might is right, ethnic cleansing is an appropriate tool of conflict resolution, and war is an opportunity for real estate development.

As some have pointed out, the neocolonialist implications of an oversight board—consisting of outside actors to keep the local Palestinian population in check—have not been lost on people in the region broadly and Palestinians more specifically. There is lip service in the original cease-fire agreement to a democratic process for Palestinians at some point in the unspecified future, but the reality is that the plans for Gaza—and the construction of the Board of Peace—emphasize other priorities.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, is given a spot on the Board of Peace, while Palestinians are not. One party to the conflict is thus elevated, while the other side is sidelined. It is important to note here that Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court warrant for war crimes and leads a government credibly accused of genocide in Gaza. Thus, rather than facilitate consequences for war crimes, the Board of Peace will clearly elevate aggressors. Putin’s invitation to join the board, in this light, makes perfect sense. Might is right.

Moreover, the outline of the GREAT plan reported on last year raises significant alarm bells. The plan discussed encouraging some segment of the Palestinian population in Gaza to leave as crucial to its success. Netanyahu and other members of his government have also made clear their intent to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. All of this points to a general acceptance of ethnic cleansing as a tool of conflict resolution—a sinister development for everyone, not just Palestinians.

Finally, the plan is predicated on the idea that post-conflict “reconstruction” can be a business opportunity, for companies named in the GREAT plan as well as the businessmen who have accepted seats on the Board of Peace. As Trump has clearly stated, he is a “real estate person at heart” and intends to utilize Gaza as a “beautiful piece of property.” Businessmen accepting seats on the board alongside world leaders indicates a similar desire on their part to leverage this conflict for monetary gain.

Overall, the concept of a Board of Peace falls in line with Trump’s vision for the world, expressed in what he has called the “Donroe Doctrine.” This is a world in which powerful countries can do whatever they wish to weaker states in their sphere of influence. U.S. intervention in Venezuela is just one example. Understood this way, the Board of Peace is the logical conclusion of a vision intended not to uphold human rights or international law but to subvert the international system altogether.

Trump’s decision to appoint Bulgarian politician Nickolay Mladenov as director-general of the board in charge of Gaza also demonstrates this point. Mladenov, a former U.N. envoy, will take charge of negotiating with Hamas and overseeing Gaza’s technocratic government. He comes from a political family (his father was an officer in the Bulgarian version of the KGB before the transition away from communism) and worked as a minister in the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, a right-wing populist who has faced allegations of corruption.

Most notably, he has led an Emirati institution, the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, since 2022, where he established himself as a proponent of the Abraham Accords. As I have previously noted, the Abraham Accords are yet another tool of authoritarian conflict management, intended to remake and subdue the Middle East via repressive means. An Emirati representative was indeed on stage in Davos, Switzerland, at the inauguration of the Board of Peace, despite the United Arab Emirates’ involvement in arming Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, which rights groups have accused of genocide.

The Trump administration hopes that the plan for Gaza, and the construction of the Board of Peace, will act as a blueprint for future conflict resolution. Meaning that other weak states or stateless peoples will meet a similar fate as Palestinians in Gaza. Aggressors—including Israel, Russia, and the UAE—can buy their way onto the Board of Peace and avoid international accountability for their war crimes.

Indeed, the Board of Peace dispenses with any pretense of international law and liberal international order that the United States and its allies once espoused. Arab liberals who advocated for democracy used to point to the fact that the United States was at least rhetorically committed to democracy, international law, and human rights—hoping that the space between reality and rhetoric could perhaps be leveraged and exploited. But now, there is nothing to be leveraged. Authoritarian conflict management is the modus operandi of the United States and other powerful states, and thus territorial aggression is not only valid but the way the world should work.

And while it is easy to quip that this new state of affairs is not meaningfully different from the United States of old, given U.S. support for violence and genocide as recently as the Biden administration, the development of the Board of Peace portends a very dangerous future. This board will delay meaningful and sustainable conflict resolution and make mass violence inevitable. The people of Gaza will pay the price first, but they will not be the last.