‘Flagrant War Crime’: Investigation Recreates 2025 Israeli Massacre, Cover-Up of 15 Gaza Aid Workers
By Democracy Now!, SCHEERPOST, 27 Feb 26
It’s been almost one year since Israeli forces killed 15 Palestinian medics and aid workers in a brutal two-hour massacre on a vehicle convoy in southern Gaza. Israeli soldiers had attempted to cover it up by burying the bodies in a shallow mass grave, and crushing the rescue vehicles with heavy machinery, but a new investigation by Forensic Architecture and Earshot has recreated a minute-by-minute accounting of what took place. Director of Earshot Lawrence Abu Hamdan, who analyzed audio from video evidence alongside witness accounts, calls the Israeli response to the attack an “obstruction of justice.” He says “there is no reason why the Israeli army, with all of its GPS coordinates, its drones in the sky, couldn’t have done this internal investigation at a way higher resolution than we can have done.”
“We’ve been able to show that the attack continues for over two hours — until 7 a.m. in the morning, where we have the last recording of the night,” says Samaneh Moafi, assistant director of research at Forensic Architecture.
Transcript……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/02/27/flagrant-war-crime-investigation-recreates-2025-israeli-massacre-cover-up-of-15-gaza-aid-workers/
Trump officials plan to build 5,000-person military base in Gaza, files show
Exclusive: approximately 350-acre compound planned as base for multinational force, according to records reviewed by the Guardian
Aram Roston and Cate Brown, Thu 19 Feb 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/19/trump-gaza-military-plan
The Trump administration is planning to build a 5,000-person military base in Gaza, sprawling more than 350 acres, according to Board of Peace contracting records reviewed by the Guardian.
The site is envisioned as a military operating base for a future International Stabilization Force (ISF), planned as a multinational military force composed of pledged troops. The ISF is part of the newly created Board of Peace which is meant to govern Gaza. The Board of Peace is chaired by Donald Trump and led in part by his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The plans reviewed by the Guardian call for the phased construction of a military outpost that will eventually have a footprint of 1,400 metres by 1,100 metres, ringed by 26 trailer-mounted armored watch towers, a small arms range, bunkers, and a warehouse for military equipment for operations. The entire base will be encircled with barbed wire.
The fortification is planned for an arid stretch of flatlands in southern Gaza strewn with saltbush and white broom shrubs, and littered with twisted metal from years of Israeli bombardment. The Guardian has reviewed video of the area. A source close to the planning tells the Guardian that a small group of bidders – international construction companies with experience in war zones – have already been shown the area in a site visit.
The Indonesian government has reportedly offered to send up to 8,000 troops. Indonesia’s president was one of four south-east Asian leaders scheduled to attend an inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington DC on Thursday.
The UN security council authorized the Board of Peace to establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza. The ISF, according to the UN, will be tasked with securing Gaza’s border and maintaining peace within the area. It is also supposed to protect civilians, and train and support “vetted Palestinian police forces”.
It is unclear what the ISF’s rules of engagement would be if there is combat, renewed bombing by Israel, or attacks by Hamas. Nor is it clear what role the ISF is meant to play in disarming Hamas, an Israeli condition to proceed with Gaza’s reconstruction.
While more than 20 countries have signed up as members of the Board of Peace, much of the world has stayed away. Although it was set up with the UN’s approval, the organization’s charter appears to grant Trump permanent leadership and control.
“The Board of Peace is a kind of legal fiction, nominally with its own international legal personality separate from both the UN and the United States, but in reality it’s just an empty shell for the United States to use as it sees fit,” said Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University.
Experts say the funding and governance structures are murky, and several contractors have told the Guardian that conversations with US officials are often conducted on Signal rather than over government email.
The military base contracting document was issued by the Board of Peace, according to a person familiar with the process, and prepared with the help of US contracting officials.
The plans say there is to be a network of bunkers each 6 metres by 4 metres and 2.5 metres tall, with elaborate ventilation systems where soldiers can go for protection.
“The Contractor,” says the document, “shall conduct a geophysical survey of the site to identify any subterranean voids, tunnels, or large cavities per phase.” This provision is likely referencing the large network of tunnels Hamas has built in Gaza.
One section of the document describes a “Human Remains Protocol”. “If suspected human remains or cultural artifacts are discovered, all work in the immediate area must cease immediately, the area must be secured, and the Contracting Officer must be notified immediately for direction,” it says. The bodies of about 10,000 Palestinians are believed to be buried under the rubble in Gaza, according to Gaza’s civil defense agency.
It is unclear who owns the land where the military compound is set to be built, but much of the south Gaza area is currently under Israeli control. The UN estimates that at least 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced during the war.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former peace negotiator, called building a military base on Palestinian land without the government’s approval an act of occupation. “Whose permission did they get to build that military base?”
Officials from US Central Command referred all questions about the military base to the Board of Peace.
A Trump administration official declined to discuss the military base contract: “As the President has said, no US boots will be on the ground. We’re not going to discuss leaked documents.”
Algorithms and AI have turned Gaza into a laboratory of death.
The Lavender case thus exposes the consolidation of a digital necropolitics. Algorithms decide who lives and who dies; corporations provide the infrastructure; intelligence services operate in the shadows; and technocratic language seeks to normalise the unacceptable. Gaza bleeds so that this model may be tested, refined, and then exported.
by Sayid Marcos Tenorio, The Middle East Monitor , 18 Feb 26
The revelations by +972 Magazine and Local Call have exposed the darkest core of the contemporary war in Gaza, in which genocide is carried out not only by bombs and missiles, but by data, algorithms and global digital platforms.
The Israeli artificial intelligence system known as Lavender has confirmed what the Palestinian resistance, Lebanon, and Iran have denounced for years: Technology as an organic part of the Zionist war machine, functioning as an instrument of surveillance, target selection, and mass extermination.
The liberal rhetoric of “digital privacy” collapses in the face of the facts. Applications such as WhatsApp insist on the promise of end-to-end encryption, but conceal what is essential, in which metadata are worth more than messages.
“Location, contact networks, patterns of communication, and group affiliations make it possible to map the social life of an entire people. In Gaza, these data have been incorporated into military systems that turn human relationships into algorithmic criteria for death.“
Lavender assessed virtually the entire population of the Gaza Strip, comprising more than 2.3 million people, assigning automated “risk scores”. Merely being in a WhatsApp group, maintaining frequent contact with someone already marked, or displaying digital patterns considered “suspicious” was enough to be placed on execution lists.
Human supervision was deliberately minimal, reduced to seconds, with conscious acceptance of high error rates. Entire families were killed in their homes, treated as “acceptable collateral damage” in an algorithmic equation that normalises massacre.
This is not a technical deviation. It is a policy of extermination. International Humanitarian Law explicitly prohibits indiscriminate attacks and requires distinction between civilians and combatants.
Systems that automate lethal decisions, pre-accepting the death of innocents, constitute crimes against humanity and reinforce the characterisation of genocide as a technologically organised and rationalised process.
The machinery that sustains this model is global. Twenty-first century espionage no longer depends on intercepting messages, but on controlling digital ecosystems.
Private platforms function as permanent sensors of planetary social life, feeding databases accessible to intelligence services such as the Mossad and the CIA, through formal cooperation, legal pressure or the exploitation of vulnerabilities. This represents a structural convergence between big tech companies, the military-industrial complex and the imperial security apparatus.
“Palestine is the laboratory. In an official statement released during the war, Hamas stated on its Telegram channel that “the occupier has turned every modern tool into a weapon against the Palestinian people, using technology to justify the killing of civilians and to conceal genocide behind technical terms”
free translation). The denunciation is clear: Israel is not waging a war against combatants, but against Palestinian existence itself, now mediated by algorithms.
Lebanese Hezbollah has warned that this model forms part of a regional hybrid war, combining digital surveillance, technological sabotage, and selective attacks.
After the attack that occurred in Lebanon in 2024, involving the coordinated explosion of pagers used by its members, Hezbollah declared through institutional channels that “the enemy has turned civilian devices into tools of assassination, proving that its war knows no ethical or human limits” (free translation). The episode revealed a new level in the weaponisation of everyday technology.
This pattern is not isolated. International investigations have already demonstrated the recurring use of military spyware against journalists, activists, and political leaders in various countries, often through smartphones widely available on the global market.
The message is unequivocal: every connected device is a potential instrument of surveillance, control, or death when inserted into the logic of imperial power……………..
The Lavender case thus exposes the consolidation of a digital necropolitics. Algorithms decide who lives and who dies; corporations provide the infrastructure; intelligence services operate in the shadows; and technocratic language seeks to normalise the unacceptable. Gaza bleeds so that this model may be tested, refined, and then exported.
Denouncing this machinery is a historic task. It is not merely a matter of solidarity with the Palestinian people, although that solidarity is urgent and non-negotiable.
It is about resisting a world in which data are worth more than lives, in which technology serves colonialism, and in which genocide is presented as an “algorithmic decision”. Today it is Gaza. Tomorrow, any people who dare to resist. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260217-algorithms-and-ai-have-turned-gaza-into-a-laboratory-of-death/
Israel used weapons in Gaza that made thousands of Palestinians evaporate.
Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].
“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,”
Al Jazeera investigation reveals how US-supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions burning at 3,500C have left no trace of nearly 3,000 Palestinians.
By Mohammad Mansour, 10 Feb 202610 Feb 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/10/israel-used-weapons-in-gaza-that-made-thousands-of-palestinians-evaporate
At dawn on August 10, 2024, Yasmin Mahani walked through the smoking ruins of al-Tabin school in Gaza City, searching for her son, Saad. She found her husband screaming, but of Saad, there was no trace.
“I went into the mosque and found myself stepping on flesh and blood,” Mahani told Al Jazeera Arabic for an investigation that aired on Monday. She searched hospitals and morgues for days. “We found nothing of Saad. Not even a body to bury. That was the hardest part.”
Mahani is one of thousands of Palestinians whose loved ones have simply vanished during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has killed more than 72,000 people.
According to the Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the war began in October 2023, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh.
Experts and witnesses attributed this phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].
Grim forensic accounting
The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate, but the result of grim forensic accounting by Gaza’s Civil Defence.
Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal explained to Al Jazeera that teams use a “method of elimination” at strike sites. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal said.
“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.
The chemistry of erasure
The investigation detailed how specific chemical compositions in Israeli munitions turn human bodies into ash in seconds.
Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.
“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”
According to the investigation, the intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.
Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.
“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”
Anatomy of the bombs
The investigation identified specific US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza that are linked to these disappearances:
- MK-84 ‘Hammer’: This 900kg [2,000lb] unguided bomb packed with tritonal generates heat up to 3,500C [6,332F].
- BLU-109 bunker buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel had declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, this bomb evaporated 22 people. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse, burying itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix. This creates a large fireball inside enclosed spaces, incinerating everything within reach.
- GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the al-Tabin school attack. It uses the AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”
Basal of the Civil Defence confirmed finding fragments of GBU-39 wings at sites where bodies had vanished.
A ‘global genocide, not just an Israeli one’
Legal experts said the use of these indiscriminate weapons implicates not just Israel but also its Western suppliers.
“This is a global genocide, not just an Israeli one,” said lawyer Diana Buttu, a lecturer at Georgetown University in Qatar.
Speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Buttu argued that the supply chain is evidence of complicity. “We see a continuous flow of these weapons from the United States and Europe. They know these weapons do not distinguish between a fighter and a child, yet they continue to send them.”
Buttu emphasised that under international law, the use of weapons that cannot distinguish between combatants and noncombatants constitutes a war crime.
“The world knows Israel possesses and uses these prohibited weapons,” Buttu said. “The question is why are they allowed to remain outside the system of accountability.”
Collapse of international justice
Despite the International Court of Justice issuing provisional measures against Israel in January 2024, ordering it to prevent acts of genocide, and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November 2024, the killing intensified.
Tariq Shandab, a professor of international law, argued that the international justice system has “failed the test of Gaza”.
“Since the ceasefire agreement [in October], more than 600 Palestinians have been killed,” Shandab said. He highlighted that the war has continued through siege, starvation and strikes. “The blockade on medicine and food is itself a crime against humanity.”
Shandab pointed to the “impunity” granted to Israel by the US veto power at the UN Security Council. However, he noted that universal jurisdiction courts in countries like Germany and France could offer an alternative path to justice, provided there is political will.
For Rafiq Badran, who lost four children in the Bureij refugee camp during the war, these technical definitions mean little. He was only able to recover small parts of his children’s bodies to bury.
“Four of my children just evaporated,” Badran said, holding back tears. “I looked for them a million times. Not a piece was left. Where did they go?”
Israel Destroyed Gaza’s Hospitals. Now It’s Banning Doctors Without Borders.
Israel says it will start enforcing its ban on 37 aid groups in Gaza in March, putting more Palestinian lives at risk
.By Eman Abu Zayed , Truthout, February 12, 2026
On January 1, the Israeli occupation revoked the licenses of 37 international and local humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, and it has now warned they must “must complete the cessation of their activities by March 1, 2026.” These organizations provide essential services to civilians: delivering food aid to the poor, supplying clean drinking water, supporting hospitals with medicines and medical equipment, protecting children and women, and overseeing education and nutrition programs in camps and local communities. The decision to revoke the licenses affects more than just paperwork — it threatens the lives of thousands of civilians who rely on this aid daily to survive one of the most severe humanitarian crises the territory has faced.
The license revocation came at the same time that Donald Trump established the “Board of Peace” tasked with overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction and implementing the second phase of the ceasefire. This international group, which includes no representation of Palestinians themselves, is allegedly responsible for facilitating the delivery of aid and the rebuilding of war-damaged areas. However, the ban on humanitarian organizations creates a significant gap, threatening the continuity of vital relief programs and leaving thousands of Palestinians without real protection amid harsh living conditions.
According to international humanitarian law, all parties in conflict are obliged to allow humanitarian aid to enter and to enable neutral organizations to assist those in need, regardless of political or security considerations. This obligation includes protecting civilians and ensuring the continued delivery of food, medicine, and clean water to affected populations. Under these laws, Israel bears the responsibility to permit these organizations to operate in Gaza and facilitate their activities in a way that does not endanger civilians or staff. Denying access to essential services constitutes a direct violation of international law.
According to testimonies from staff within aid organizations operating in Gaza, such as Oxfam, the restrictions imposed by Israel are seen as a means of pressuring humanitarian organizations to halt the delivery of vital aid. One Oxfam employee based in Gaza, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal, explained that these measures are not merely about controlling aid — they aim to criminalize humanitarian work, weaken aid infrastructure, harm civilians, and increase daily suffering.
Staff members from the branch of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) based at Al-Aqsa Hospital confirmed to Truthout that the restrictions include detailed demands for employee information and operational locations, as well as strict administrative procedures, making it extremely difficult to continue their work and threatening the stability of food, medicine, and water services relied upon by thousands of civilians daily. In light of these pressures, employees believe that the real objective of these policies is not security, but rather to disrupt humanitarian work and widen the gap in aid delivery……………………………………………..
These restrictions come at a critical moment, as humanitarian workers face real dangers in carrying out their duties. Since the beginning of the Israeli assault in October 2023, at least 543 humanitarian workers have been killed while providing aid in Gaza, including staff from local and international organizations. Over 1,700 health care workers have lost their lives while attempting to deliver medical care to the wounded and other patients. Additionally, around 256 journalists and media personnel, as well as more than 140 civil defense workers, have been killed. These shocking statistics demonstrate how Israel has turned humanitarian work into a dangerous mission, threatening the continuity of essential services………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://truthout.org/articles/israel-destroyed-gazas-hospitals-now-its-banning-doctors-without-borders/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=6c4318efa8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_02_12_10_34&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-6c4318efa8-650192793
The U.S. plan for Gaza has nothing in it for Palestinians
The U.S. plan for Gaza envisions a Gaza for investors, not Palestinians.
By Qassam Muaddi January 28, 2026 , https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/the-u-s-plan-for-gaza-has-nothing-in-it-for-palestinians/
The latest iteration of the future U.S. plan for Gaza was revealed last week by U.S. President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the inaugural ceremony of the so-called “Board of Peace,” which is tasked with overseeing the reconstruction and administration of the Strip. Kushner’s presentation included a map of what Gaza would look like after reconstruction, including industrial zones, residential blocks, and tourism beaches. The plan advertises a new Rafah and a new Gaza City, completely separate from one another. Meanwhile, the edges of the Strip — which once served as Gaza’s farmland and bread basket — would now be home to industrial complexes. Kushner’s plan doesn’t foresee any restoration of Palestinian neighborhoods or villages, and offers no place for natural Palestinian life to exist. Only fixed residential blocks, surrounded by investments.
After two years of genocide, the outcome that is being laid out for the people of Gaza — and the Palestinian people as a whole — is the creation of a dystopian reality that sees the building of luxury resorts on top of their destroyed homes and communities.
The only role for Palestinians in this vision is to be managed — controlled, “concentrated” in confined zones, and later possibly expelled. All of this is masked as a “historic” humanitarian effort.
A Gaza without Palestinians
Soon, it will be four months since the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect. On Monday, the first phase of the agreement officially ended after the Israeli government announced that Israeli forces had found the body of the last dead Israeli soldier held captive in Gaza. Israel had refused to move to the second phase of the ceasefire before Hamas handed over the remaining body, which the Israeli army reportedly found on the Israeli-controlled side of the Strip.
Coincidentally, in the past few days, U.S. President Trump announced the formation of the Board of Peace, initially planned to oversee the transition in Gaza during the second phase of the ceasefire. Simultaneously, the Israeli government agreed to reopen the Rafah crossing, a crucial step for the second phase. A week earlier, the Palestinian technocratic committee for the administration of Gaza was also announced.
But what’s actually happening on the ground started well before the technocratic committee was formed. Israel’s longstanding plans for Gaza — to corral its population into concentrated zones ahead of their possible expulsion — have been silently unfolding on the ground. Last week, Drop Site News revealed documents obtained from the U.S.-Israeli military and civil command center in Israel showing preparations for a residential area to be built in Rafah. According to Drop Site, if developed, the “planned community” in Rafah “would contain and control its residents through biometric surveillance, checkpoints, monitoring of purchases, and educational programs promoting normalization with Israel,” comparing it to a panopticon. Rafah was completely leveled by the Israeli army earlier in 2025.
Based on an analysis of satellite imagery conducted by Forensic Architecture, the Drop Site report indicates that the new “community” is being prepared on a 1-square-kilometer plot of land in Rafah at the intersection of two military corridors.
Jonathan Whittall, a senior UN official in Palestine between 2022 and 2025, said that “this is the next phase in the weaponization of aid,” after reviewing the materials obtained by Drop Site
This idea to “concentrate” Palestinians into a highly surveilled area is in line with previous statements made by Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, who said last July that Palestinians who would be allowed into the so-called “humanitarian city” — proposed to be built over Rafah’s ruins — would not be allowed to leave it. The scheme was widely decried by human rights groups as a thinly-disguised plan to build a “concentration camp,” and was seen as a first step toward pushing Palestinians to leave Gaza entirely. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly told his cabinet as much in September, under the label of “voluntary emigration.”
Meanwhile, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the body of Palestinian technocrats set to oversee day-to-day governance in the Strip, is about to enter Gaza. It has so far garnered the support of all Palestinian factions, yet remains subordinate to Trump’s Board of Peace, with only limited executive powers. The Board of Peace, on the other hand, plays a political role in drafting plans for Gaza.
The NCAG is the first-ever Palestinian governing body in Palestine that is not part of the PLO’s institutional structure, which effectively splits Gaza politically from the rest of Palestine. Instead, its ultimate political reference now lies in a Board of Peace headed by Trump and, among others, Israel. The vision it is advancing for Gaza is one without Palestinians.
In fact, all the unfolding information about the U.S. plan for Gaza shows that it treats the Palestinian question as a purely humanitarian issue shorn of any political content. It completely ignores the centrality of Gaza to the Palestinian cause as a political question and fails to address the basic element of the “conflict” — Palestinian self-determination.
This should not be surprising, given that decision-making is dominated by U.S. business interests, ambitions of regional control and power, and Israel’s ideological drive to push Palestinians out. In the midst of all this, no Palestinian voice is present.
As Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ presses forward, Palestinians in Gaza fear what lies ahead.
“I’m afraid that this committee will be the thing that enforces Trump’s plan on Gaza to turn our homeland into a place that’s not for us,
Mondoweiss spoke with Gazans after the announcement of the Palestinian technocratic committee that will oversee Gaza under Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’. While some hope for change, many fear the committee will ultimately serve U.S. and Israeli interests.
Mondoweiss, By Tareq S. Hajjaj January 27, 2026
On January 22, the long-awaited Palestinian technocratic committee, which is set to administer Gaza under the direction of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘Board of Peace’, was finally announced.
In his first address to the people of Gaza, the committee’s director, Ali Shaath, said that the Rafah crossing with Egypt, which has been unilaterally closed by Israel since May 2024, will be reopened in both directions. The announcement went viral in Gaza, and brought to the forefront a flurry of questions on the minds of Gazan society right now.
Is Trump’s plan for Gaza actually moving forward? What kind of power will this committee actually have? Will Israel actually allow for this next phase of the so-called “ceasefire” to move forward? What comes next for the people of Gaza?
And while Hamas has officially welcomed the committee and expressed its commitment to handing over administrative power in the Strip to the committee known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), people in Gaza are nevertheless skeptical over how and when a transfer of power will happen, and whether the committee will actually produce positive results for Gazans, or be just another tool in Israeli and U.S. domination.
“The committee will not end the crisis immediately, but at least there is a committee that has a green light from the U.S. and mediators to make a difference,” Anwar Abu Jabal, 33, a Gaza resident, said.
Abu Jabal, like many in Gaza, is primarily concerned with reconstruction, and who is going to be able to change the daily living conditions of the millions of people living in tents and bombed-out buildings. He hopes that the committee will be able to rebuild Gaza, or at least, play a role in it. But he remains skeptical and distrustful of the U.S. role in overseeing the committee.
“We have hope in this committee to rebuild Gaza, especially as it is supported by Trump. However, the same reason we put our hope in this committee can be used against us, because Trump does not care about people in Gaza. We hope this committee cares and starts to get us back to our places first,” he said.
For Abu Jabal and others, the presence of familiar names in Gaza on the committee, like Husni al-Mughanni, a well-known tribal leader in Gaza, provides some hope or reassurance that the committee may help alleviate the suffering of Gazans. “We all in Gaza want one thing: to live in safety and stability, and to have our needs and requirements met without hardship or suffering,” Abu Jabal said.
Others, in fact, most of the Palestinians in Gaza that spoke to Mondoweiss, are not as hopeful. Many Gazans, like 21-year-old Moaz Zayed, a resident of Nuseirat refugee camp, are concerned about the ultimate control that Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’, of which Israel is a member, has over Gaza and the Palestinian NCAG.
“If this committee’s power is confined to managing crossings and aid trucks, then it’s nothing but a play [by the U.S. and Israel] to lead people to think that Palestinians in Gaza have a government now, and that their issues are [being solved],” Zayed said, likening the committee to the ceasefire, which has continuously been violated by Israel since it went into effect, to little international attention or outrage.
To him, while reconstruction is important, opening the Rafah crossing and allowing in aid is secondary to Israel withdrawing its troops from Gaza, the return of all the displaced people to their homes on the Israeli-occupied side of the ‘yellow line’, and the guarantee of safety and basic human rights for Palestinians in Gaza in their own homeland – none of which, he pointed out, is currently guaranteed.
“I’m afraid that this committee will be the thing that enforces Trump’s plan on Gaza to turn our homeland into a place that’s not for us,” Zayed said. “Where are they? Why are they not here in Gaza among the people? My biggest fear is that this committee will be working and ruling the Gaza Strip according to Trump’s and Israel’s instructions.”
Israel’s role
While reactions and attitudes in Gaza towards the committee are mixed, there is one sentiment that all Gazans share: the feeling of near certainty that Israel will sabotage any kind of progress for Gaza.
Abdel Hadi Farhat, a journalist from the Gaza Strip, points out that Israel did not adhere at all to the first phase of the ceasefire, and that there is no guarantee it will adhere to the second phase, which includes the work of this newly formed committee………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://mondoweiss.net/2026/01/as-trumps-board-of-peace-presses-forward-palestinians-in-gaza-fear-what-lies-ahead/
Trump’s October 10 ceasefire, Board of Peace, simply continues Israeli Palestinian genocide in slow motion.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 26 Jan 26
That was some ceasefire Trump negotiated with Israel October 10. Since then Israel has killed nearly 500 Palestinians with bullets and bombs. Many more are likely dead from starvation and disease as Israel lets in less than 170 trucks of food daily instead of the required and promised 600. ‘Ha ha…little nourishment for you starving Palestinians.’
Water, medicine, everything needed to sustain life is restricted to drive out the beleaguered living in makeshift tents. Why tents? Israel, with over 50,000 tons of Biden, Trump bombs, pulverized over 80% of all Gaza buildings, including over 90 % of all housing. Likely over 10,000 Gaza corpses are rotting under the 60 million tons of rubble including over 9 million tons of hazardous material. Ceasefire notwithstanding, Israel has knocked down or damaged over 2,500 post ceasefire buildings.
In order to force Palestinians from Gaza, Israel has reopened the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt. But it’s Israel’s version of a reverse Roach Motel. Palestinians can check out…but they can never check back into their rightful homeland. Every Palestinian that leaves, along with every Palestinian shot, bombed or starved to death, is one less pesky Palestinian to get rid of in absorbing Gaza into Greater Israel.
Israel has exploited the ceasefire to occupy over 50% of Gaza territory, shooting any Palestinian who strays over or close to Israel’s yellow boundary lines.
Astonishingly, the UN Security Council’s November 17 Resolution 2803 (2025) certified Trump’s Board of Peace which effectively makes Trump Gaza’s ruler, totally excluding Palestinian involvement. In doing so it upends over 70 years of UN resolutions and requirements that Palestinians in Gaza have the right to live and govern their homeland free from subjugation; indeed annihilation.
Why did this Security Council resolution pass? Simple, Trump essentially blackmailed Council members that it was either Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace, excluding Palestinians, or he would greenlight continuing the horrific 2 year bombing obliteration of Gaza and its citizens till they were all dead and gone. .
Israel, with US support, will never allow a Palestinian state in Gaza the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The horrific daily slaughter may be reduced to a trickle, but it will continue indefinitely till every Palestinian in Gaza is gone.
Trump’s ceasefire and Board of peace have the additional benefit to both Israel and Trump administration of removing the daily ethnic cleansing of Gaza from mainstream media coverage. They have moved on to more dramatic foreign hotspots in Venezuela, Iran and Greenland as well as Trump’s ICE thugs murdering fellow citizens in Minneapolis
Israel and the Trump administration’s slow motion genocide of Palestinians in Gaza should be opposed by all decent, moral nations and persons as fervently as their opposition to the preceding two yearlong all out genocide. Trump’s ceasefire and Board of Peace has put lipstick on the pig of Israeli genocide destroying Palestinians in Gaza.
The Gratuitous Barbarity of Trump’s So-Called ‘Board of Peace’
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law.
In the fantasy being pushed by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies, Jan 23, 2026, Common Dreams
At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a “new Gaza”: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony—and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza.
But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be “demilitarized” and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead. As Israeli-backed Palestinian militias openly take credit for targeted killings, the United States is reviving a familiar, deadly—and thoroughly discredited—playbook from Iraq and Afghanistan, in which death squads, night raids, and “kill or capture” missions are cynically repackaged as stabilization and peace.
Gaza is now being positioned as the next laboratory for this model, under the banner of Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” with consequences that history has already shown to be catastrophic.
That strategy was laid bare on January 12th, 2026, when Lieutenant-Colonel Mahmoud al-Astal, the police chief of Khan Younis in Gaza, was assassinated by a death squad based in the Israeli-occupied part of Gaza beyond the “yellow line.” A militia leader known as Abu Safin immediately took credit for the killing, which he said was ordered by Shin Beit, Israel’s anti-Palestinian spy agency.
Another Israeli-backed militia, reputedly linked to ISIS, killed a well-known Gaza journalist, Saleh Al-Jafarawi, in October. That militia’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, was disowned by his family for running a pro-Israel death squad and was killed on November 4th, reportedly by one of his own gang.
These Israeli-run death squad operations follow a similar pattern to the targeted killings of Iraqi civil society leaders as resistance grew to the hostile US military occupation of Iraq in 2003 and 2004. But as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, these targeted killings are likely to grow into a much more systematic and widespread use of death squads and military “kill or capture” night raids in the next phase of Trump’s “peace” plan.
President Trump has announced that the so-called “International Stabilization Force” (ISF) in Gaza will be under the command of US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who was, until recently, the head of US Special Operations Command. Jeffers is a veteran of “special operations” in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US occupation responded to widespread armed resistance with death squad operations, thousands of airstrikes, and night raids by special operations forces that peaked at over a thousand night raids per month in Afghanistan by 2011.
But like Israel’s Palestinian death squads during the first stage of Trump’s “peace” plan, the US mass killing machines in Afghanistan and Iraq began on a smaller scale.
For an article in the New Statesman, published on March 15, 2004, British journalist Stephen Grey investigated the assassination of Abdul-Latif al-Mayah, the director of the Baghdad Centre for Human Rights and the fourth professor from al-Mustansariya University to be killed. Professor al-Mayah was dragged out of his car on his way to work, shot 20 times and left dead in the street. A senior US military spokesman blamed his death on “the guerrillas,” and told Grey, “Silencing urban professionals… works against everything we’re trying to do here.”
On further investigation, Grey discovered that it was forces within the occupation government, not the resistance, that killed Professor Al-Mayah. An Iraqi police officer eventually told him, “Dr. Abdul-Latif was becoming more and more popular because he spoke for people on the street here… There are political parties in this city who are systematically killing people. They are politicians that are backed by the Americans and who arrived in Iraq from exile with a list of their enemies. I’ve seen these lists. They are killing people one by one.”
A few months later, retired Colonel James Steele, a veteran of the Phoenix program in Vietnam, the US war in El Salvador and the Iran-Contra scandal, arrived in Iraq to oversee the recruitment and training of new Special Police Commandos (SPC), who were then unleashed as death squads in Mosul, Baghdad and other cities, under command of the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
Steven Casteel, who ran the Iraqi Interior Ministry after the US invasion, was the former intelligence chief for the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Latin America, where it worked with the Los Pepes death squad to hunt down and kill Pepe Escobar, the leader of the Medellin drug cartel.
In Iraq, Steele and Casteel both reported directly to US Ambassador John Negroponte, another veteran of US covert operations in Vietnam and Latin America.
Just as John Negroponte, James Steele and Steven Casteel brought the methods they learned and used in Vietnam and Latin America to Iraq, Jasper Jeffers brings his training and experience from Iraq and Afghanistan to Gaza, and will clearly bring other special operations and CIA officers with similar backgrounds into the leadership of the so-called International Stabilization Force (ISF).
The ISF, as described in Trump’s “Peace Plan,” is supposed to be an international force that would provide security, support a new Palestinian police force, and oversee the demilitarization and redevelopment of the Gaza Strip. But the Arab and Muslim countries that originally showed an interest in contributing forces to the ISF all changed their minds once they understood that this would not be a peacekeeping mission, but a force to hunt down and “disarm” Hamas and impose a new form of foreign occupation in Gaza.
Turkey wants to send troops, but so far, Israel has objected, and the other countries that have expressed interest, such as Indonesia, say there is no clear mandate or rules of engagement. And what Muslim country will send forces to Gaza while Israel controls over half of the territory and moves the “Yellow Line” even deeper into Gaza?
Even if some Arab and Muslim countries are persuaded to join the ISF, the most difficult and politically explosive job of actually destroying Hamas will most likely be in the hands of the US and Israeli Special Ops commanders, the mercenaries they bring in and the death squads they recruit.
We can expect to see General Jeffers and his team provide more training and direction to Palestinians already collaborating with Israel in death squad operations, and try to recruit more militia members from current and former Palestinian Authority security forces in the West Bank and from the Palestinian diaspora.
CIA and JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) officers with experience in death squad operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to oversee these operations from the shadows, using the same “disguised, quiet, media-free approach” that senior US military officers hailed as a success in Central America as they adapted it to the “war on terror” and the “war on drugs.”
For political reasons, Jeffers will probably use JSOC officers mainly for training and planning, and employ private military contractors to conduct night raids and other combat operations. Along with the huge expansion of US and allied special operations forces in recent US wars, there has been a proliferation of for-profit military contractors that employ former special operations officers from US and allied countries as unaccountable mercenaries.
These privatized forces have already been deployed in Gaza, notably by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Its food distribution sites became death traps for desperate, hungry people forced to risk their lives just to try to feed their families. Israeli forces and mercenaries killed at least a thousand people at and around these sites.
The tens of thousands of Americans and others who took part in night raids in Iraq or Afghanistan and special operations in other US wars have created a huge pool of experienced assassins and shock troops that Jeffers can draw on, with for-profit military and “security” firms serving as cut-outs to shield decision-makers from accountability. More routine functions, such as manning checkpoints, can be delegated to other ISF forces, military police veterans and less specialized mercenaries.
The appointment of General Jeffers to command Trump’s ISF, and Israel’s formation and deployment of Palestinian death squads during the first phase of Trump’s phony peace plan, should be all the red flags the world needs to see what is coming—and to categorically reject Trump’s obscene plan before it goes any farther.
Like Bush and Blair planning the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Trump is planning to systematically violate the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and especially the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, which guarantees protection for civilians in war zones or under military occupation.
Tony Blair’s role in Trump’s plan is further evidence that the plan has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with the Western imperialism that keeps rearing its ugly head around the world, and which has bedevilled Palestine for more than a century.
Appointing Blair to any role in governing Gaza ignores not only his role in US and British aggression against Iraq, but also his lead role in the U.K. and EU’s decision, in 2003, to abandon earlier efforts to bring Palestinian factions together in the interest of Palestinian unity. Instead, they adopted a militarized, “counterinsurgency” strategy toward Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups. Blair’s failed policy helped pave the way for Hamas’s election victory in 2006, and for the endless, US-backed Israeli violence against Gaza ever since.
It is perhaps no wonder that Trump and Blair see eye to eye on Palestine, as they share the same ignorance, egotism and inhumanity, and the same disdain for international law. But the savage methods used by US special operations forces and US-trained death squads to kill hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq only fueled broader resistance, which ultimately drove U.S occupation forces out of both countries.
The same tactics will lead to the same failure in Gaza. But unleashing such horrific violence on the already desperate, starving, unhoused, captive people of Gaza is a policy of such gratuitous barbarity and injustice that it should compel the whole world to come together to put a stop to it.
Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’”
The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s bulldozing of Gaza to make real estate opportunities for investors.
By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, January 22, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/kushner-reveals-dystopic-plan-to-build-data-centers-on-ruins-of-gaza-genocide/
White House Adviser Jared Kushner revealed a neocolonial plan to transform Gaza into a home for luxury tourist resorts and data centers at the World Economic Forum on Thursday.
The plan has been widely condemned by human rights advocates, who say it is an an attempt to erase Palestinians by building a capitalist dystopia on the ruins of Israel’s genocide.
At the signing ceremony for President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” Kushner shared a set of slides depicting a colonialist fantasy of the Gaza Strip under a hypothetical “demilitarization” of Hamas — despite the group’s repeated refusal to disarm, saying it would leave them defenseless against further attacks by Israel or otherwise.
The slides show computer-generated photos of high rise buildings along the coast and rows of residential buildings elsewhere.
The presentation includes a blueprint of Gaza divided into sections, which Kushner says is the U.S.’s plan for “catastrophic success” in the event of demilitarization of Hamas. The blueprint, labelled as the “Master Plan,” shows the entirety of the coast — where Palestinians have long fished for sustenance — dedicated to “coastal tourism,” with a sea port and an airport. There are large swaths dedicated to “parks, agriculture, and sports facilities.”
Tellingly, numerous parts of the map located next to residential areas are dedicated to industry and “data centers.” Ruinous technology like AI, reports have said, are slated to be a major part of the White House’s plan for Gaza, with other slides in the pitch deck reported by The Wall Street Journal showing a transformation of the Strip into a “smart city” with “tech driven governance.”
Nowhere is there a designation for cultural sites, nor does the map seem to be built around keeping or restoring any parts of Gaza that retain Palestinian heritage or life. The plan appears to be to finish Israel’s razing of the territory, clear the rubble in which thousands of Palestinians’ bodies are thought to be trapped, and replace it with real estate opportunities for investors.
“Gaza, as President Trump has been saying, has amazing potential,” said Kushner.
At the signing ceremony, Trump said that Gaza, home to millions of Palestinians, is “a great location” that should be viewed as a “big real estate site,” and expressed his interest in the region as a “real estate person at heart.”
“I said, look at this location on the sea, look at this beautiful piece of property — what it could be for so many people, it’ll be so great, people that are living so poorly are gonna be living so well,” Trump said.
Kushner touted the White House’s goal of applying “free market economy principles” to the razing and redevelopment of Gaza. He also expressed a desire to replace the humanitarian aid system for Palestinians in the region using those principles.
Palestinians have strongly condemned the plan.
“This is a plan to erase Gaza’s indigenous character, turn what remains of her people into a cheap labor force to manage their ‘industrial zones’ and create an exclusive coastline for ‘tourism,’” wrote Palestinian American writer Susan Abulhawa. “Palestinians will be pushed behind walls and gates, retrained in ‘technical schools’ to serve Israel’s supremacists ideology. The indigenous traditions and social fabric of this land will be obliterated utterly.”
“If the goal is truly peace, then the path is simple: end the occupation and help restore the rights that have been taken from Palestinians since 1948,” said Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian writer from Gaza. “We, the Palestinian people, are the ones who must determine our own future. Peace cannot be imposed while our land is occupied, our lives controlled, and our voices ignored.”
A Board of Peace built on the rubble of Gaza
22 January 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/a-board-of-peace-built-on-the-rubble-of-gaza/
There are moments in politics when language becomes so detached from reality that it tips from cynicism into a farce. Appointing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza is one such moment.
Netanyahu is not a neutral stakeholder. He is not a reluctant participant dragged into a tragic conflict. He is the leader who has overseen the systematic destruction of Gaza: tens of thousands of civilians killed, entire neighbourhoods erased, hospitals flattened, universities bombed, and a population deliberately deprived of food, water, shelter, and hope. He is also the subject of an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
That Israel has rejected those charges or dismissed them as political is beside the point. Courts exist precisely because perpetrators rarely accept responsibility for their own actions. The question is not whether Netanyahu agrees with the accusations – it is whether the facts on the ground support them.
They do.
International law defines genocide not by slogans or historical analogies, but by actions and intent. Killing members of a protected group. Causing serious bodily or mental harm. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about a group’s destruction, in whole or in part. Gaza today bears the unmistakable imprint of each of these elements.
Add to this the repeated, dehumanising rhetoric from senior Israeli officials – Palestinians described as “human animals”, Gaza spoken of as something to be “flattened”, “erased”, or emptied – and the claim that this is merely an unfortunate but lawful military campaign collapses under its own weight.
Legal processes move slowly. They always do. Genocide is almost never recognised as such while it is unfolding. Rwanda was denied until the machetes were put down. Srebrenica was minimised until the mass graves were opened. History shows that moral clarity arrives long before judicial finality.
Which is precisely why Netanyahu’s elevation to a “Board of Peace” is so grotesque. Peace is not brokered by those actively prosecuting a war of annihilation. Reconstruction is not overseen by those who created the ruins. And justice is not served by rehabilitating leaders while the bodies are still being pulled from the rubble.
Trump’s board is not a peace initiative. It is a branding exercise – one that launders responsibility, flattens moral distinctions, and asks the world to accept Orwellian doublespeak as diplomacy.
Calling this arrangement a farce is not rhetorical excess. It is an accurate description. When an alleged war criminal is recast as a peacemaker, language itself has been bombed into submission.
And Gaza, once again, is expected to pay the price.
Welcome to the Peace IPO: Gaza, Rebranded as a Prospectus
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do.
21 January 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/welcome-to-the-peace-ipo-gaza-rebranded-as-a-prospectus/
Trump’s so‑called “Board of Peace” looks less like a new deal than Jared Kushner’s “Peace to Prosperity” 2019 plan re-branded. It’s as flash as a rat with a gold tooth in a new suit and a limited‑edition Speedmaster, but woefully vapid. It’s a real‑estate pitch pimped as an opportunity to the canny. Palestinians appear merely as background labour: extras, porters, shoeshine boys and waiters in a production where they’re expected to serve, not share.
While Israel’s Likud‑led far‑right coalition continues its military actions, attacks and land grabs that UN experts and human‑rights organisations describe as genocidal in effect.
The difference is not the logic. The difference is the volume. And a crass vulgarity meter off the scale. But nothing can distract from the monumental inhumanity and asinine stupidity of the whole project.
Not to mention calculated cruelty. In 2019, the sales pitch was polite. It spoke in the soothing language of workshops and investment frameworks; a $50 billion vision to “unlock” Palestinian potential, as if the West Bank and Gaza were a start-up stuck in beta because it hadn’t embraced enough deregulation. Palestinians boycotted it because the plan put money in the driver’s seat and rights in the boot.
In 2026, the pitch is blunt: join the Board, bring capital, buy a seat at the table, said to be a US$1 billion buy-in for “permanent” membership, while the souls whose land is now an upscale reno, get “technocratic committees,” “transition governance,” and the home comforts of Israeli management.
Peace, in other words, has gone subscription-tier.
How we got this Frankenstein
The Frankenstein story begins with another colour-coded Excel spreadsheet. As so many other, modern horrors do.
Kushner’s original “Peace to Prosperity” treated Palestine as an underperforming asset. The cure was foreign capital, investment corridors, industrial parks, tax-free zones, economic carrots without a match-stick of political liberation. The occupation, the siege, the “asymmetry” or inequality of power was left intact, politely ignored, like rust and dried blood, under a quick new paint-job.
Of course, the plan didn’t just sideline Palestinians’ political agency, the elephant in the room. It shut them out. Local and global fat cats would use Palestinians as a labour pool and a “stability problem,” while sovereignty, restitution and justice sat outside, like poor, uninvited relatives at a wedding.
Then came the moment where the whole philosophy slipped its tie and revealed the raw instinct underneath it.
In a February 2024 bull-session at Harvard, Kushner gazed at Gaza and saw—not a besieged enclave packed with families and memory – but “very valuable” waterfront property, and he floated the idea of moving civilians out so Israel could “clean it up.” As you do. That is not a diplomatic remark. It is a hard-nosed developer’s call. It is the real-estate gaze: people only get in the way, land is your opportunity.
Fast-forward to Trump’s “Board of Peace,” and you can see the same gaze. Formulated.
The language is a sales brochure parody. The White House frames the Board as part of a “Comprehensive Plan” and celebrates the creation of a Gaza administrative committee as a “vital step” in a multi-phase roadmap for “peace, stability, reconstruction, and prosperity.” Al Jazeera notes a three-tier structure that puts Trump and pro-Israel officials at the top while Palestinians get to take out the garbage. The landowners are relegated to municipal duties. ABC says invitation mail-outs are thick and fast. It worries that Trump is setting up as an alternative, $uperior, model to UN mechanisms.
Satire is writing itself by the time we get to the seat price. Bloomberg reports Trump wants nations to pay $1 billion for permanent membership, with renewable term options for non-paying participants.
This is not diplomacy. This is a club. It is peace by buy-in. A moral authority with an admission fee?
Why it could be proposed at all
Something this offensive to Gaza’s actual inhabitants only makes sense once Palestine is reclassified, from homeland to high-yield opportunity zone.
That reclassification didn’t happen overnight. It took decades of a broader architecture of policy and language to reduce Palestinian rights to “final status issues”; treat their political claims as a negotiating inconvenience, and normalise de facto control on the ground as an unchangeable reality.
Once you perform that trick; once you turn rights into “issues,” and a people into an “administrative challenge”, then the next step becomes conceivable: the coastline becomes an asset; the survivors become “human resources”; and peace becomes a portfolio strategy.
Trump’s political brand fits perfectly. He fuses branding with foreign policy. He doesn’t ask, “What is just?” He asks, “What sells?” He doesn’t ask, “What do people consent to?” He asks, “Who’s paying?”
CounterPunch repeatedly frames the Trump approach to “peace” as chaotic, self-interested statecraft where the prize is not justice but leverage, contracts, and strategic positioning; the kind of diplomacy that behaves like a market raid.
So the Board of Peace is not an aberration. It is the system, finally saying the quiet part out loud.
Satire interlude: Peace, now with equity options
There is, apparently, a new path to peace in Gaza: an Initial Public Offering.
The prospectus is glossy. The board is illustrious. Only one thing missing from the term sheet is the consent of the people who actually live there.
Trump, now moonlighting as Chair of Global Serenity LLC, has got up a committee that includes himself, Kushner, and Tony Blair: a trio whose track record is a museum of modern hubris. It’s less a diplomatic team than a support group for men who believe history is a distressed asset they were born to privatise.
The sales pitch is an elegantly simple Levantine Walz:
One. Label Gaza “valuable waterfront property”; a phrase typically intoned just before someone proposes a golf course over a mass grave.
Two. Announce that peace comes with tiers. A “permanent seat”? $1 billion, thank you. Peace, but make it premium.
Three. Invite governments and investors to bid for moral authority while Palestinians are quietly sidelined into the business plan as “local capacity.”
Kushner, once tasked with making peace by people who confused “son-in-law” with “diplomat,” returns as the visionary architect. The same man who dismissed political claims as obstacles and mused that Gazans could be moved out so someone could finally do something tasteful with the shoreline.
Having failed at “Peace to Prosperity,” he has now moved on to “Peace to Portfolio Diversification.”
What it really represents
Strip away the PR turd-polish and the Board of Peace represents three deeper trends:
Neoliberal occupation
Economic-first “solutions” that treat Palestinians as an economic population to be “developed” rather than a political people to be free. This was the Bahrain model: investment theatre without dismantling the structures that make normal economic life impossible.
Financialisation of justice
A $1 billion buy-in doesn’t just raise governance questions; it changes the moral architecture. It says legitimacy can be bought. It says peace is an asset class. It says the right to influence the future of Gaza belongs to whoever can wire the funds.
Erasure by technocracy
National claims, refugees, restitution, the right of return are all swept aside and replaced with “governance development,” “capacity building,” “administrative transition.” The jargon fog in which an occupied people are recoded as an admin problem consultants can solve.
The real genius is euphemism density. Layer upon layer. Occupation becomes “security architecture.” Siege becomes “border management.” External control becomes “oversight.” And the bombed-out landscape becomes “an opportunity corridor.”
What’s likely to happen next
Here the satire ends and the stakes bite. Legitimacy will be radioactive so long as Palestinians remain excluded from real sovereignty while the conditions of coercion persist. A structure unveiled about them, without them, is not peace, it’s administration.
Those positioned to profit will circle early. Reconstruction is always where politics, contracts, and influence meet. A pay-to-play architecture is an engraved invitation to opportunists and aligned states seeking leverage.
Civil society backlash will grow precisely because the moral inversion is so blatant: catastrophe monetised; rights treated as optional add-ons.
And the core problem, the one no amount of branding can fix, remains brutally simple:
If you build “peace” on the denial of self-determination, on the absence of accountability, and on the conversion of a people’s catastrophe into a capital project, you won’t get peace.
You’ll get a prospectus. You’ll get a boardroom. You’ll get a beachfront brochure printed on the ashes.
The Debt That Cannot Be Traded
The “Board of Peace” is a gamble that history can be treated as a distressed asset, and that a people’s identity can be diluted into a dividend. It assumes that if you make the brochure glossy enough, the ghosts of the past and the demands of the present will simply vanish into the “transition committees.”
But there is a flaw in the real-estate gaze: it mistakes silence for consent and rubble for a blank slate.
True peace is not a subscription service, and it certainly isn’t a premium tier accessible only to those with a billion dollars to burn. If we have learned anything from the century that birthed this Frankenstein, it is that human dignity is the one currency that cannot be devalued by an Excel spreadsheet. The “Board” may try to privatise the future, but they cannot buy the air, the memory, or the sheer, stubborn persistence of fifteen million people who refuse to be “extras” in their own story.
The old truth remains: you can build a boardroom on a shoreline, and you can print a prospectus on the ashes, but you cannot govern a people who haven’t been seen, only managed. In the end, the most “valuable property” in Gaza isn’t the waterfront; it is the unyielding agency of those who live there.
That is the debt that eventually comes due, and it is the only one that can’t be settled at a discount and the only one we keep turning away from at incalculable cost to our collective humanity.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
A Cruel Truce: Israel’s Ongoing Demolition of Gaza
15 January 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-cruel-truce-israels-ongoing-demolition-of-gaza/
What matters peace if it permits killing, maiming and destroying the infrastructure of a society supposedly once at war? This is the situation facing Gaza as the occupying Israeli forces go about their business making the Strip even more uninhabitable for the Palestinian residents, ensuring that that land will be vacated, either through force or massaged consent, to enable its eventual seizure.
In a January 12 report, The New York Times found that Israel had razed over 2,500 buildings in the Strip since the ceasefire with Hamas commenced on October 10, 2025. These have been initiated on the Israeli side of the demarcated side known as the Yellow Line. The report, however, also notes the demolition of buildings on the side controlled by Hamas. “The scale of ongoing destruction is stark. Across eastern Gaza, in areas under Israeli control, satellite imagery reveals that entire blocks have been erased since the cease-fire, as well as swaths of farmland and agricultural greenhouses.”
The NYT quoted the grave words of Gaza-based political analyst Mohammed Al-Astal: “The Israeli military is destroying everything in front of it – homes, schools, factories and streets. There’s no security justification for what it’s doing.” A former Israeli official did not disagree. “This is absolute destruction,” assessed Shaul Arieli, commander of Israeli forces in Gaza in the 1990s. “It’s not selective, it’s everything.”
Under the thin covering of a cruel truce, Israel’s demolition campaign, according to the Palestinian National Initiative Movement, is intended to “deepen the humanitarian catastrophe and impose forced displacement and collective punishment on the people of Gaza.”
Justifications provided to the NYT were not reassuring, relying on that part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan affirming that, “All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapons production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt.” An Israeli military official denied a lack of discrimination in the destruction. At times, buildings collapsed because of the IDF’s detonation of explosives in tunnels underneath them. The air force had also been striking structures deemed a threat to Israeli soldiers, some of them being adjacent to the Yellow Line. It was also conceded that demolitions were taking place on both sides of the Yellow Line, though Israeli forces had not crossed the line in doing so.
This pattern is not a newly discovered one. The BBC took note of this in November last year when it revealed that “entire neighbourhoods controlled by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been levelled in less than a month, apparently through demolitions.” The broadcaster’s Verify unit had analysed satellite imagery showing “that the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale.” Many of the buildings destroyed showed no indication of being damaged prior to their razing, notably in such areas as eastern Khan Younis, around Abasan al-Kabira. Gardens, trees and a number of small orchards were also pulverised in the exercise.
Such actions should have been considered blatant violations of the ceasefire terms. Israeli officials, current and former, were having none of it. Ex-head of the National Security Doctrine Department, Eitan Shamir, suggested that the IDF had acted in accordance with the terms, seeing as they did not apply to areas of the Strip behind the Yellow Line. This gorgeous casuistry also found form in the cold language of an IDF spokesperson who explained that, in accordance with the agreement, “all terror infrastructure, including tunnels, is to be dismantled throughout Gaza. Israel is acting in response to threats, violations, and terror infrastructure.” The level of destruction permitted relies on the beholder’s definition of the threat posed.
In December, it was the turn of Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, which found much the same thing. “Satellite images showed the latest demolitions took place between November 5 and December 13, with most concentrated in the Shujayea and the Tuffah neighbourhood.” The images also revealed demolitions in the southern city of Rafah and the levelling of agricultural facilities east of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the destruction by an occupying power of real or personal property belonging either individually or collectively to private persons, or to a State, public authorities, or social or co-operative organisations, except in circumstances where it is absolutely necessary as part of military operations (Article 53).
In an email to Al Jazeera in December, Adil Haque of Rutgers Law School was sceptical that the systematically destructive activities of the IDF had complied with the provisions of the Convention. “With a general ceasefire in place, and only a few sporadic exchanges of fire, it is not plausible that such significant destruction of civilian property has been rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.” Absolute necessity, he explained, had to “arise from military operations, that is, from combat or direct preparations for combat.”
In responding to the NYT report, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, summed up the grim state of affairs with characteristic sharpness. “The so called peace plan,” she fumed on social media, “is allowing Israel to ‘finish the job’: 450 killed; 2,500 structures destroyed; lifesaving aid blocked.” Less a peace plan, it would seem, than a state of ongoing, permitted violence falling just short of war.
Founders of Deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), ‘Shaping’ New US-Backed Administration for Gaza: Report
Netanyahu’s top military advisor is among those central to the new executive committee, which is due to operate under Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’
News Desk, JAN 14, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/founders-of-deadly-ghf-shaping-new-us-backed-administration-for-gaza-report
Many of the figures emerging as key players in the new US-backed administration for Gaza were central to Washington’s Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the Financial Times (FT) reported.
The GHF was a deadly US-Israeli aid scheme introduced in May, which was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of starving Palestinian aid seekers.
According to the FT report, the Gaza executive committee set to be announced soon – which will operate directly under a Trump-led ‘Board of Peace’ – is being “shaped” by several people close to Israel.
This includes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief military advisor, Roman Gofman, and US-Israeli investor Michael Eisenberg, who has been advising the Israeli premier since the start of the ceasefire.
Others involved are US-Israeli policymaker Aryeh Lightstone and Israeli cybersecurity entrepreneur Liran Tancman, who is Mossad-linked.
All four of these men were involved in the establishment of GHF. The deadly aid scheme resulted in the killing of around 2,000 Palestinians within half a year.
Under the pretext of humanitarian assistance, Palestinians were crammed into tight spaces and handed limited quantities of aid for months as Israeli troops and US contractors regularly opened fire at unarmed aid seekers.
The announcement of Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ was meant to take place this week, but has been delayed. According to reports, the executive committee that will operate under the board could be announced as early as Wednesday.
“Eighteen Palestinian officials have received invitations to join the committee that will replace Hamas,” sources told the New Arab.
Ali Shaath, a former deputy planning minister in the Palestinian Authority (PA), has been designated to head the committee, while retired intelligence official Mohammed Nisman is expected to assume control over security.
According to the sources, the committee is scheduled to hold its meeting in Egypt’s capital on Thursday, the sources said.
The ‘Board of Peace,’ which will be announced later, is expected to include 15 world leaders from countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Egypt.
Hamas has repeatedly vowed that it is ready to hand over governance to an independent body of technocratic Palestinians, as envisioned in the truce.
It rejects disarmament until an independent Palestinian state is formed, but has expressed openness to an initiative that would “freeze” its weapons for a period of time.
The group has stressed that the second phase of the ceasefire deal cannot commence until Israel halts all violations.
Israel has killed at least 442 Palestinians since the US-backed ‘ceasefire’ was reached in October last year, the Gaza Health Ministry reported. Over 1,200 have been injured.
Tel Aviv continues to indiscriminately target civilians, justifying the attacks under the pretext of alleged ‘security threats,’ while persisting in the violent pursuit of resistance leaders with no regard for the terms of the ceasefire agreement. The blockade on Gaza also remains in place, further deepening the humanitarian crisis.
Sources told Times of Israel in a report published on 11 January that the Israeli army has drawn up plans for a new assault in the Gaza Strip – aimed at expanding the areas under Tel Aviv’s control in violation of the ceasefire.
Trump names son-in-law, Rubio, Blair to Gaza ‘Board of Peace’
Jessica Gardner, Jan 17, 2026 , https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/trump-names-son-in-law-rubio-blair-to-gaza-board-of-peace-20260117-p5nuqb
Washington | United States President Donald Trump has named Secretary of State Marco Rubio, his Middle East fixer Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and private equity baron Marc Rowan to a Board of Peace to oversee the rehabilitation of wartorn Gaza.
The formation of the board, which will be chaired by Trump, was one of the 20-steps in a peace plan that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the terror group Hamas agreed to in September 2025, which led to the longest enduring ceasefire in the two-year conflict.
A White House statement released on Friday afternoon (Saturday AEDT) named the seven-member executive board, which also includes former British prime minister Sir Tony Blair, World Bank president Ajay Banga and US national security adviser Robert Gabriel.
There are no women on the board, nor are there any Palestinian representatives or leaders from Arab nations.
Each board member will “oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilisation and long-term success,” the White House said. These responsibilities included governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilisation.
Trump has also appointed Major General Jasper Jeffers to command an International Stabilisation Force to “establish security, preserve peace, and establish a durable terror-free environment”.
Trump has previously relied on Witkoff and Kushner as on-the-ground sherpas of his unorthodox style of foreign policy. Witkoff, a former real estate developer, has also been heavily involved in negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
The two men, as well as Blair and Rowan, the chief executive of $US908 billion ($1.4 trillion) investment giant Apollo Global Management, will also join a Gaza Executive Board responsible for supporting governance and service delivery.
Other members of that board include Turkish Foreign Minster Hakan Fidan, Qatari diplomat Ali Al-Thawadi, Egyptian intelligence official Hassan Rashad and United Arab Emirates Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy.
Trump earned praise for his role in persuading Netanyahu to end his military campaign in Gaza, which was sparked by the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by the terror group Hamas, which killed 1200 Israelis and took 250 hostages. Israel’s two-year retaliation led to the death of over 70,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians.
The ceasefire led to the return of all living hostages and almost all the remains of those hostages who had been killed.
Witkoff said in a post on social media platform X on Wednesday that the White House was moving into the second phase of Trump’s peace plan, which will include establishing a transitional Palestinian governing committee and beginning the complicated tasks of disarming Hamas and reconstruction.
The United Nations has estimated reconstruction will cost over $US50 billion. This process is expected to take years, and little money has been pledged so far.
Trump’s 20-point plan — which was approved by the U.N. Security Council — lays out an ambitious vision for ending Hamas’ rule in Gaza. If successful, it would see the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision, the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, and the creation of a possible pathway to Palestinian independence.
But if the deal stalls, Gaza could be trapped in an unstable limbo for years to come, with Hamas remaining in control of parts of the territory, Israel’s army enforcing an open-ended occupation, and its residents stuck homeless, unemployed, unable to travel abroad and dependent on international aid to stay alive.
The ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, although Israeli fire has killed more than 450 Palestinians since then, according to Gaza health officials. Palestinian militants, meanwhile, continue to hold the remains of the last hostage — an Israeli police officer killed in the Hamas-led attack that triggered the war.
Gaza’s population of more than 2 million people has struggled to keep cold weather and storms at bay while facing shortages of humanitarian aid and a lack of more substantial temporary housing, which is badly needed during the winter months.
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