President Donald Trump is expected to chair the first formal meeting of the Board of Peace, an organization initially established to help stabilize the Gaza Strip, on Thursday in Washington.
Reports indicate that 47 countries accepted the invitation to attend the first meeting, including Gaza neighbors such as Israel and Jordan and faraway states allied with the administration of President Donald Trump, including Paraguay and Hungary.
Notably absent from the Board of Peace, despite being invited, are many of the most influential countries in Europe, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The European Union will be represented by its commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Suica, but it is not a member and is sending Suica only as an observer. The highest-ranking European leader expected at the summit is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a longtime supporter of Trump’s foreign policy.
Other nations expected to participate are Argentina — whose citizens were among those abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023 — several Middle East nations such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The government of Canada will not be in attendance as President Trump withdrew his invitation following belligerent statements by leftist Prime Minister Mark Carney. Trump invited the four largest countries in the BRICS anti-American bloc — Brazil, Russia, China, and India — but all either declined or did not accept the invites publicly at the time of writing. The socialist government of Brazil publicly described itself as “confused” about the initiative and expressed concerns it would undermine the United Nations, whose resolutions are typically dominated by anti-Israel actors.
President Trump announced the establishment of the Board of Peace, and debuted its lineup in an informal meeting, in January at the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland.
At the event, Trump explained that the initial objective of the Board of Peace is to stabilize Gaza and ensure that the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas no longer controls it.
“This board has the chance to be one of the most consequential bodies ever created, and it’s my enormous honor to serve as its chairman. I was very honored when they asked me to do it,” Trump said at Davos.
Though it remains the only entity resembling a ruling enterprise in the area, Hamas largely lost control in Gaza as a result of the war between Hamas and Israel prompted by the gruesome massacre of over 1,000 civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel has since recovered all the hostages Hamas smuggled into Gaza on October 7 and has moved into a phase of participating in the establishment of peace in the region.
The two key initiatives that multiple reports indicated on Wednesday and early Thursday would make up the bulk of discussions during the meeting this week are fundraising to help rebuild Gaza and the development of an International Stabilization Force to prevent Hamas from re-establishing its terrorist presence in Gaza.
“Senior U.S. officials said Trump will also announce that several nations are planning to send thousands of troops to participate in an International Stabilization Force that will help keep the peace in Gaza when it eventually deploys,” Reuters reported on Thursday. Other reports, also citing anonymous sources, asserted that Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, is expected to take the lead in organizing the International Stabilization Force.
The left-wing British newspaper The Guardian reported on Thursday that, in addition to the establishment of the force, the Trump administration has plans to build a massive military base in Gaza to allow the stabilization force to operate appropriately there.
“The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian,” the newspaper claimed. “The Indonesian government has reportedly offered to send up to 8,000 troops. Indonesia’s president was one of four south-east Asian leaders scheduled to attend an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington DC on Thursday.”
As for the funding, President Trump revealed in a recent publication on his website, Truth Social, that “Member States have pledged more than $5 BILLION DOLLARS toward the Gaza Humanitarian and Reconstruction efforts.” He also suggested in the same message that the stabilization force already had thousands of servicemembers pledged to it from various participating nations.
Hamas is not expected to participate in the Board of Peace meeting. In a message this month, one of Hamas’s last remaining living leaders, Khaled Mashaal, insisted that the terrorists would not agree to put down their weapons.
“Criminalizing the resistance, its weapons, and those who carried it out is something we should not accept,” Mashaal claimed. He insisted that Hamas would continue to engage in terrorism “as long as there is occupation,” a term typically used to mean the existence of Israel as a state.
While the Board of Peace is currently focused on Gaza, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested at Davos that its mandate could extend beyond the Middle East.
“A lot of times, people like to give speeches. I’ve been to many of these forums, and they’re not useless, and… they have utility in many cases,” Rubio said, “but oftentimes in international affairs, we often find ourselves at events where people are reading these scripted statements, these strongly worded letters that they put out, but no action. Nothing happens. This is a group of leaders that are about action.”