Donald Trump unveils his ‘Board of Peace’ at Davos on January 22/WH

By Joseph Ingram

February 14, 2026

Donald Trump’s approach to ostensible Middle East peacemaking, like his approach to so many things, is framed by both the limits of his experience and his unlimited ego.

This combination has defined the Board of Peace — Trump’s departure from decades of institutional memory and intellectual capital invested in peace between Israelis and Palestinians — as something between a $1 billion Vegas time-share pitch presentation and the Virtucon cabal in Austin Powers.

As The Guardian‘s Julian Borger wrote in January, “When they voted to endorse the board of peace in November, other members of the UN security council hoped they were binding Trump into a Gaza peace process, but it now appears they were hoodwinked into backing a Trump-dominated pay-to-play club: a global version of his Mar-a-Lago court aimed at supplanting the UN itself.”

This approach is not new. In an essay authored shortly after the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, I suggested that the agreement was at best the result of amateur diplomacy conducted by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner (an aspiring real estate mogul) on behalf of a president whose career was built on the acquisition and construction of lavish luxury properties.

I also concluded that the exclusion of the Palestinians and representatives of the larger Shia community from the talks, as well as the absence of any reference to an eventual two-state solution, would likely lead to conflict.

Almost six years later, there are 75,000 dead Palestinians, 2,100 dead Israelis, and a Gaza strip largely reduced to rubble (with an estimated 80% of its buildings destroyed) and with much of its population of 2 million displaced and living under inhumane conditions.

While for the moment, open hostilities between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas have ceased, a lasting solution to the conflict has yet to be agreed upon.

What we do have, however, from much the same Abraham Accords team with the addition of Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio, is a proposal to create a “Middle East Riviera” along the 40-km (25-mile) Gaza oceanfront whose promotional renditions presented at Davos last month look like a cross between Abu Dhabi and Disney World. Or, as Le Monde described it, “largely disconnected from reality.”

Indeed, the absence of any specific mention of Gaza from the document establishing the Board of Peace has been cited as evidence that the body is intended as a substitute for the United Nations Security Council — a New World Order competitor to render redundant the decision-making bodies of the multilateral status quo.

While for the moment, open hostilities between the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas have ceased, a lasting solution to the conflict has yet to be agreed upon.

Fantasy notwithstanding, the superimposition of property development norms and financial culture over a longstanding conflict zone didn’t work with the Abraham Accords and is not likely to work for a ravaged Gaza. To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, paving hell and putting up a parking lot is not likely to bring peace to the Middle East.

As observed by Francis Fukuyama of Stanford University, “Everyone would like to figure out how to transform Somalia, Haiti, Nigeria, Iraq or Afghanistan into Denmark … Most people living in rich, stable developed countries have no idea how Denmark itself got to be Denmark.”

This limited experience is especially represented in the billionaire property developers and Trump acolytes clearly animated by commercial gain, ideological animus towards multinational institutions, and any perceived left-of-center governance.

Notwithstanding the presence of World Bank President Ajay Banga on the board, as well as representatives of oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, with an estimated cost in excess of $70 billion, the reconstruction of physical capital may well require many more billionaires, since for the moment, with the exception of President Trump’s good friend from Hungary, Viktor Orban, no European state, nor Canada has agreed to join the 26 member body.

In fact, though President Trump initially invited Canada to join the board following Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech, the invitation was rescinded thereby allowing the Prime Minister to avoid having to make a public decision on whether his government would be party to the project.

At the same time, the U.S. administration has chosen to eliminate USAID and starve of critical financial support some 31 UN specialized development agencies and 35 non-UN agencies, several of which are experienced in the type of reconstruction and policy support that will be required to reconstruct Gaza.

Indeed, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimates that in the Gaza strip alone, an unprecedented 61 million tons of rubble will need to be cleared, only the first step in restoring basic infrastructure and public services in health, power generation, sewerage, water supply – a prerequisite, along with a functional legal and judicial system, as well as educational bodies, to create the skills and governing institutions needed to sustain a growing, viable economy while improving social conditions.

The UN estimates that just the first phase of clearing the rubble will take over half a decade to complete. All of this, of course, assumes a comprehensive peace settlement, rather than today’s shaky ceasefire with no clear path towards a Palestinian entity, no agreement by Hamas to give up its weapons, nor a Trump administration prepared to stop Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank.

President Trump’s team of diplomats and real estate moguls is ill-equipped to build the kind of institutional resilience necessary to move Gaza forward from the hell of the past two years and onto a path of inclusive and sustainable economic and social development.

Rather than the insulting fantasy of a Gaza Riviera so far removed from today’s Gazan realities, American resources should be used to leverage support from other countries to deploy the kind of expertise that, in tandem with the international financial institutions and private capital, could provide both the knowledge and experience needed in building the institutional resilience so desperately required in any post-conflict country, Gaza included .

There’s a difference between peacebuilding and carpetbagging.

Joseph Ingram is a former President of The North South Institute, a former World Bank Special Representative to the United Nations and the WTO, and a former Director of The World Bank office in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.