President Donald Trump has sent a flurry of invitations this weekend to world leaders to join a new “Board of Peace,” being marketed as an international peace-building organization. However, a permanent seat on the board will cost countries $1 billion.
A U.S. official confirmed that figure would be the cost for permanent membership but added that the was no “requirement” to contribute anything to join, while nations that do not pay the fee would have a three-year membership. The U.S. official shared the details on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. News of the fee was first reported by Bloomberg.
A draft of the charter for the proposed board was confirmed by the U.S. official, but not released publicly by the White House. A copy was posted online Sunday by the Times of Israel.
The White House announced with much fanfare Friday the board’s creation as part of Trump’s plan to supervise the rebuilding of the devastated Gaza Strip, but the draft charter being circulated makes no direct mention of the region. That has given rise to speculation that Trump is aiming to build a U.S.-led alternative to the United Nations.
The charter went out with invitations to world leaders, including those of Argentina, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy and Turkey. King Abdullah II of Jordan was also invited, the Jordanian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.
Egypt and Turkey acknowledged the invitation, but neither country has said whether it would join.
A copy of the draft charter published by the Times of Israel appears to put forward a much broader mandate for the board than initially described by Trump in October, when he helped execute a ceasefire deal that marked the end of Israel’s destructive two-year war in Gaza and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. The following month, the United Nations Security Council agreed to Trump’s plan to create a board that would oversee the rebuilding effort in Gaza.
According to the draft, the body’s mission is “to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
The charter also calls for “the need for a more nimble and effective international peace-building body” and “a coalition of willing States committed to practical cooperation and effective action.”
European leaders have been consulting with one another about Trump’s expansive ambitions for the board and most are unlikely to sign on to it in its current form, one senior European official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive subject.
But the same leaders don’t want to spark yet another fight with Trump when they are confronting him on Greenland and need him to support Ukraine, which is suffering through a freezing winter and escalated Russian attacks.
There is also little appetite to contribute large sums of money to a new organization that would be dominated by Trump’s vision for a new world order, the European official said, even as Europeans remain committed to helping fund the reconstruction of Gaza.
The U.S. official said that the funds would be used directly to accomplish the Board of Peace’s mandate to rebuild all of Gaza. The board will ensure nearly all dollars will be used to execute that mandate and not be spent on “administrative bloat that plagues many other international organizations.”
Aaron David Miller, a former State Department diplomat who has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on the Middle East, called the board “largely performative” and expressed skepticism on how it could work on an international stage.
“We need on-the-ground diplomacy, not the performative creation of committees and bringing large numbers of countries and individuals into a process in which most of them will have no role,” Miller said. “You need Trump. You need [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. You need Hamas’s internal and external leadership, and you need the Qataris and the Turks.”
The Board of Peace would convene voting meetings at least once a year and the agenda would be subject to the chairman’s approval, according to the charter draft.
“The Board of Peace is a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth,” Miller said. “The Board of Peace is not going to be able to solve the conflict in Sudan. It is not going to do what American mediators and Europeans couldn’t do with respect to getting a ceasefire in Ukraine”
According to the charter, Trump will decide on who is invited to join the board. On Friday, Trump announced seven members to a founding executive board, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Three others include World Bank President Ajay Banga, deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel and billionaire private equity chief Marc Rowan.
Decisions will be made by a majority vote, the draft says, with each member state receiving a single vote. But decisions can be vetoed by the chairman, who has “the final authority regarding the meaning, interpretation, and application of this Charter,” again putting Trump firmly in charge.
Alongside the Board of Peace, the White House said Friday that a secondary operational committee known as the Gaza Executive Board had formed. That body includes Kushner, Witkoff and Blair, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Qatari diplomat Ali al-Thawadi.
Israeli officials have already expressed their opposition to Trump’s plan. Netanyahu’s office said the board’s announcement “was not coordinated with Israel” and “runs contrary to its policy,” clashing over the inclusion of diplomats from Turkey and Qatar.
Netanyahu will hold a Cabinet meeting late Sunday regarding the Board of Peace, according to the Israeli media.
Khaled Elgindy, a Palestinian scholar at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, was also critical of the proposal. “There is not a single reference to Palestinians, their rights, interests, or even a future Pal state — none of which are a priority for Blair, Trump or the so-called Board of Peace,” he wrote on X.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Trump had raised the concept of the board of peace with him several weeks ago, and he said he agreed to the idea “in principle.”
But he said he had several questions on how it would operate.
“With respect to the specifics of the board of peace, we haven’t gone through all the details of the structure, how it’s going to work, what the financing is for, etcetera,” he told reporters in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday. “We will work through those in the coming days.”
Niha Masih, Amanda Coletta, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Lior Soroka and Claire Parker contributed to this report.
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