Dozens of world leaders and national delegations are scheduled to gather in Washington, D.C., on Thursday for the first meeting of Donald Trump’s peace commission, as Europe’s main allies refuse to join it and criticize its opaque funding and political mandate.
The White House has signaled that the new special board summit at the renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace will serve as a major fundraiser, with President Trump announcing on social media that countries have pledged more than $5 billion to rebuild the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by war with Israel and continues to suffer from a humanitarian crisis.
The US president asserted that member states are also “deploying thousands of personnel to the International Stabilization Force and local police to maintain the safety and peace of Gazans.”
The council was initially created with the primary goal of rebuilding Gaza, but President Trump has since expanded its mandate to include responses to other global conflicts.
But despite Trump’s characteristic bombast, the peace committee summit will be met with deep skepticism, with limited expectations for Thursday’s meeting in Washington and in the Middle East, where the 100-day peace and recovery plan announced by Jared Kushner at Davos has stalled and aid to Gaza remains trickling.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former U.S. diplomat, said it would be difficult for a peace commission to resolve the key questions in the Israel-Gaza conflict: who governs the territory, who provides security on the ground and how to address the pressing needs of the Palestinian population. There was also little indication of how the peace committee could break the key stalemate in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, he added.
“The board is a useful tool for a president who is interested in quick wins and deals and a lot of moves instead of serious moves, as a way to show that things are somehow… not dead,” he said, referring to diplomacy. “So you’ll get some impressive pledges. But it’s one thing to make a pledge and another thing to live up to it.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has declined her invitation, and leaders of major US allies such as Britain, Germany and France have also said they will not participate in the peace commission. President Trump rescinded his invitation to Canada’s Mark Carney following the Canadian prime minister’s critical speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
The White House’s initiative was dealt a further blow this week when Pope Leo
Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomat, said: “One concern is first and foremost at the international level.” [United Nations] Manage these crisis situations. This is one of the points we have been making. ”
Instead, the conference will be attended by Middle Eastern delegations including Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Qatar, as well as a number of international countries not directly involved in the Gaza conflict, including Argentina, Paraguay, Hungary and Kazakhstan. Many are seen as doing the Trump administration a favor by joining the Peace Commission, which is proposing to secure a permanent seat with a $1 billion donation to support his latest signature initiative.
Max Rodenbeck, director of the International Crisis Group’s Israel-Palestine project, said the effort would come under intense scrutiny, adding: “There is great skepticism around the world about the form and intentions of the peace commission.”
“If these talks do not lead to rapid and concrete improvements on the ground, especially on the humanitarian front, their credibility will quickly erode,” he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed on to the idea during a visit to Washington last week, but chose to skip the meeting. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, a right-wing ally of Prime Minister Netanyahu, will attend in his place.
Winning Israeli cooperation on the peace plan is expected to be extremely difficult in an election year when Prime Minister Netanyahu seeks to preserve the far-right wing of his party and avoid any perception that he is collaborating with regional powers like Qatar and Turkey, which have close ties to Hamas.
Developments on the ground show that few political and security organizations have made real progress toward resolving the conflict or easing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza under the peace plan backed by President Trump.
It’s been nearly a month since Kushner, who is also President Trump’s son-in-law, announced his 100-day peace and recovery plan, but those appointed to implement it are still vague about how it will work.
Fifteen members of the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a technocratic organization created under President Trump’s plan, are waiting in Cairo, eager to show the people of Gaza a rapid improvement in living standards, but lacking the means to get anything done.
Nikolai Mladenov, who is set to head the Gaza Strip’s peace committee, has so far kept a low profile and has said even less about his role. NCAG’s first major social media post, posted Saturday, suggested a degree of discontent and a message that it did not intend to be a puppet.
“We emphasize that NCAG’s full administrative, civilian and police control is not merely procedural. [the] “NCAG cannot be expected to assume responsibility without the full executive, civilian, and police powers necessary to effectively carry out its mandate,” NCAG’s post on X reads.
“Everything is slower than expected and everyone is very frustrated,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli commentator and peace activist who played a role in negotiating the peace plan.
“NCAG will remain in Cairo until there is a clear understanding that something can be achieved. It would be very unconstructive to go to Gaza now. They will not be able to achieve anything,” Baskin said. They don’t even know what their budget is, how much money they have to work with, or what their work will be. It is not even clear to them under whose authority they are working. ”
There are also moves to create an International Stabilization Force (ISF), which is envisioned in President Trump’s plan to provide support to Palestinian police. Indonesia has already contributed 8,000 troops. Barracks sites have been prepared for them in Gaza, and there is reportedly an office of the Civilian Military Coordination Center with “ISF” written on the door. But there’s no one inside.
Diplomats in Jerusalem fear that the ISF plan will fail unless the right conditions are created for its deployment, including a viable plan for the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of the IDF.
Aid to Gaza remains severely restricted, and the very limited list of prohibited “dual-use” items, which is a major obstacle to any recovery effort, remains unchanged, and includes nearly everything made of metal, including metal tent poles.
“Israel continues to move further west along the yellow line into Gaza territory. People are still being killed and buildings are being demolished,” said Sam Rose, deputy Gaza director for U.N. relief agency Unrwa. “We seem to have fallen into a pattern of managing conflict and managing post-conflict in ways we never expected.”