Trump names Tony Blair to Gaza ‘Board of Peace’

President Donald Trump has named former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his so-called “Board of Peace“, which is expected to oversee the United States president’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

The White House said on Friday that Blair would be among the board’s founding executive members, alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.

The other members are Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; World Bank Group President Ajay Banga; and Robert Gabriel, a US deputy national security adviser.

The board members “will oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success”, the White House said, including “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization “.

Bulgarian diplomat and former senior United Nations official Nickolay Mladenov will serve as the High Representative for Gaza, according to the statement.

The announcement also named members of a Gaza Executive Board, aimed at supporting governance and services in Gaza. Blair, Kushner and Witkoff were also named to the board, along with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Qatari diplomat Ali Al Thawadi and others.

In addition, the White House said that US Major-General Jasper Jeffers has been appointed as Commander of the International Stabilisation Force for Gaza.

Jeffers, who is the current commander of US special forces, would lead the force in a range of areas, including security operations, delivering humanitarian aid and supporting “comprehensive demilitarization”, the White House said.

While the US has long supported Israel’s demand that Hamas surrender all of its weapons, the Palestinian group has said it wants guarantees before doing so.

The Gaza Executive Board will support the Office of the High Representative and a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), headed up by Ali Shaath, which is expected to handle day-to-day governance in Gaza in lieu of Hamas.

Shaath is a former Deputy Minister of Transportation for the Palestinian Authority, who is from Khan Younis in Gaza but based in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas had previously said it was ready to abandon its governing duties in the enclave as outlined under the Trump plan.

There was no immediate response from Hamas and other Palestinian political factions to the makeup of the Board of Peace’s executive board.

The White House announcement on Friday comes just days after Witkoff announced the launch of the second phase of the US-brokered plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians since October 2023.

The US administration has said Trump’s plan is “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction”.

But Palestinians have questioned what that will mean in practice, as Israel continues to carry out deadly attacks across the coastal enclave and restrict deliveries of humanitarian aid, in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that came into effect in October.

A 10-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Friday, as members of a planned Palestinian technocratic committee sat down for the first time in Cairo to prepare for the rollout of phase two of Trump’s plan.

The participation of Blair, who served as British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, has also been a major point of contention, after his name was floated as a possible candidate for the Board of Peace months ago.

The former United Kingdom Labour Party leader strongly supported the US-led so-called “war on terror” in the early 2000s, and joined then-US President George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and another newly-named executive board member, is also a staunch supporter of Israel who previously suggested that Palestinians are incapable of self-governance.

Kushner’s family also has strong ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.

In 2024, Kushner underscored that Gaza has “very valuable” waterfront property, saying that Israel should “move the people out and then clean it up”.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, noted that some of the people nominated by Trump will be “members of both the Board of Peace and of the executive board for Gaza”.

“It would appear from this structure outline that the Board of Peace has the overarching responsibility, but dealing with the nuts and bolts on the ground in transition will be the Gaza Executive Board,” Hanna said.

Hanna also noted that Mladenov’s role as the High Representative for Gaza shows that there will be a UN component, considering the Bulgarian diplomat was previously the UN’s top envoy to the region from 2015-2020.

“There is a UN component in this, which is very important, given the differences between the US and the UN in recent years,” Hanna said.

“To have the UN viably involved in the reconstruction of Gaza is utterly essential for these boards, the Board of Peace and the administration board, to have a semblance of credibility,” he added.

Criticism of the board also emerged swiftly.

Ashish Prashar, who worked as an aide to Blair between 2010 and 2012, called for rejecting international trusteeship over Gaza, stating in a post on social media that “the future of Palestine should only be decided by Palestinians”.

“It appears the only qualification for joining the Gaza ‘peace board’ is to have a strong track record of endorsing (and arming) Israel’s project of genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and criminalising those who oppose it,” Prashar told Al Jazeera in a statement.

“Trump’s Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ was just a pilot project. All states who signed off on it are the ones who paved the way for Trump’s next ‘Boards of Peace’ in Venezuela, Ukraine and any other place the extractionist American regime wants to take next,” he said.

Source: Al Jazeera