President Donald Trump announced on Thursday a $10 billion U.S. contribution to rebuilding Gaza at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, describing the organization as the premier world body for international peace and harmony.
“I believe it’s the most consequential board, certainly in terms of power and in terms of prestige,” Trump said as he opened the meeting with representatives of about two dozen countries that have accepted his invitation to join. “There’s never been anything close because these are the greatest world leaders. Almost everybody’s accepted. And the ones that haven’t will be. And some are playing a little cute. That doesn’t work. You can’t play cute with me.”
Several leaders attended, including the presidents of Indonesia and Argentina, the prime minister of Hungary, and the king of Bahrain, although many members sent lower-level officials. A number of European allies, nearly all of whom declined to join, and several others sent observers to the session.
Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko accepted Trump’s invitation but then said he would send his foreign minister, though neither showed up. A ministry statement issued Thursday on social media said that despite receiving all the right forms on time, the United States had not issued visas for the Belarusian delegation. “If even basic formalities aren’t respected, what ‘peace’ are we talking about?” the statement said.
Trump has framed the board as a supplement — or possibly an alternative — to the United Nations, which he has dubbed an ineffectual organization and put at risk of imminent fiscal collapse by withholding the United States’ mandatory dues that make up nearly a quarter of its operating budget as well as other contributions.
The meeting was held at the U.S. Institute of Peace, the congressionally established independent nonprofit that the administration seized last year and renamed after Trump, a move that is still the subject of litigation. U.S. officials, board members and others, sitting on a dais in the massive, blue-curtained foyer of the building, presented details on implementing the ambitious rebuilding phase of Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan that ended the two-year war between Israel and Hamas.
Speakers called to the lectern after Trump’s lengthy opening remarks included Ali Shaath, the head of a committee of Palestinian technocrats that will be tasked with setting up local governance inside Gaza, and Nickolay Mladenov, the board’s chief representative for Gaza. They described plans for a 5,000-strong local police force Shaath said will “be deployed in 60 days.”
Mladenov said that 2,000 people had applied to join the force since it posted its first recruitment call on social media Wednesday. That police unit will in theory complement the 20,000-strong International Stabilization Force over the “long term,” U.S. Maj. Gen. Jasper Jeffers, ISF commander, told the meeting attendees. During the event, he listed five countries that have agreed to provide soldiers for the foreign force, including Indonesia — whose president said it would contribute up to 8,000 — as well as Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Albania, whose numbers and roles are still unclear.
After an initial deployment near Rafah in southern Gaza, in the half of the enclave still occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces, Jeffers said, ISF troops would gradually deploy to four additional sectors inside the rest of Gaza, where Hamas currently remains in charge.
A temporary housing community for thousands of Palestinians is to be built around Rafah, said Israeli billionaire Yakir Gabay, a member of the board’s executive committee. What he described as the “master plan” will eventually include planned cities, high-tech industry and transportation infrastructure, and “a new Mediterranean Riviera with 200 hotels and potential islands.”
A video shown to attendees, depicting scenes of futuristic towns and industry, said that by “year three,” Rafah, which was almost entirely destroyed by Israeli airstrikes and has now been bulldozed into a building site, would be “fully rebuilt, unemployment curbed and Gaza [will be] connected to the world through an Abrahamic gateway … extending to India and Europe.”
Within 10 years, the video predicted, “Gaza will be self-governed, integrated into the region with thriving industries and housing for all.”
Much of the preview echoed plans drawn up and circulated within the White House more than a year ago by Israeli entrepreneurs who envisioned Gaza in a U.S.-controlled trust, with private enterprise paying for much of the redevelopment. World Bank Group President Ajay Banga at Thursday’s meeting described his organization’s role as trustee to manage the government-contributed funds.
Several attendees, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, pledged funds totaling more than $6.5 billion — though the cost of reconstructing Gaza is estimated at many times that.
The $10 billion pledge by Trump was seen by some observers as assuaging concerns that the president, who chairs the board and retains virtually total control over its membership and decisions, had put no U.S. skin in the game. Trump did not say where the money would come from or whether he intends to run the funding by Congress for approval.
There was little discussion at the meeting about the disarmament of Hamas forces that still control half of Gaza — the primary roadblock to further implementation of the peace plan. “The world is now waiting on Hamas,” Trump said in a brief reference. “And it’s the only thing that’s standing in the way.”
Both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have said that “demilitarization” of Hamas could happen “the easy way or the hard way.” A senior Netanyahu aide said this week that a 60-day deadline had been set before Israel may resume the war.
The meeting came as Trump has recently boasted about military action in Venezuela and as U.S. forces have been surged to the Middle East in advance of a potential conflict with Iran. In remarks opening the event, he described last week’s round of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program as “good” and said that “maybe we’re going to make a deal. Maybe not. You’re going to be finding out over the next, maybe, 10 days.”
Some of the officials who came only as observers, not as full participants, were frank about their mixed feelings about the effort. “Whatever is about peace is a good idea and good-intentioned,” Dubravka Suica, a top European Union official who was sent as the European Commission’s observer, said after the gathering.
“Of course it would be better if at the beginning, the rules of procedure were more transparent and more clear,” Suica added.
During his near hour-long speech, Trump mused about the wealth or good looks of some of the people in the room. He gave a shout-out to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has been criticized for anti-democratic actions such as curtailing independent media and is struggling in an upcoming election campaign. “Not everybody in Europe loves that endorsement, but that’s okay,” Trump riffed.
He delved into familiar political gripes and grievances and congratulated members of his own administration. He panned speeches at the Munich Security Conference by political opponents California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York).
He recounted the various wars he claims to have stopped and revisited his very public disappointment at not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Norway has agreed to host an event bringing together the Board of Peace,” Trump said of the country, where a nongovernmental committee awards the prize. “Oh, I thought when I saw this note. … I thought they were going to say that they’re giving me the Nobel Prize. Oh, this is less exciting. … I don’t care about the Nobel Prize. I care about saving lives.”
He praised FIFA President Gianni Infantino, whom he had invited to the Board of Peace event, and recalled that the soccer organization gave him a peace prize after “I got screwed by Norway.” In his own remarks to the meeting, Infantino said FIFA would invest millions in Gaza to build 50 “mini” and five full-sized soccer fields, as well as a national stadium seating up to 25,000.
“We’re going to straighten out Gaza … make it successful and safe,” Trump said in closing the meeting. “And we’re also going to maybe take [the board] a step further where we see hot spots around the world.”
“We’ll work together again with the United Nations. … It’s got tremendous potential, but it needs a lot of help,” Trump said. “We can fix up even the building.”
Michael Birnbaum contributed to this report.
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