Board of Peace Is a Board of Profits
As details about President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace and its plans for the reconstruction of Gaza trickle out, two things become increasingly clear: Palestinians have barely, if at all, been consulted in these plans; and the people in Trump’s orbit stand to benefit from the project the most.
The U.N. Security Council approved the Board of Peace as a mechanism for implementing Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Israel and Gaza back in November, though its mandate now appears much broader. The BoP itself consists of high-level representatives from Gulf nations, Israel, Serbia, Albania, and Argentina, among others, with Trump himself as the chair and ultimate decision-maker. Absent from the Board of Peace are representatives from almost every EU country except Bulgaria and Hungary, and anyone representing Palestine.
The BoP’s executive board—tasked with putting the BoP’s vision into practice—is composed of billionaire businessmen like Marc Rowan, CEO of private equity firm Apollo Global Management; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and Steve Witkoff, the real estate mogul turned Trump donor turned special envoy to the Middle East. There’s Ajay Banga, the World Bank president who prioritizes private-sector investment in global development, as well as U.S. Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, deputy national security adviser Robert Gabriel, and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The special Gaza Executive Board adds Israeli-Cypriot real estate mogul Yakir Gabay, who enjoys a close friendship with Kushner, as well as representatives from the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey. Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch U.N. coordinator for humanitarian aid into Gaza and the lone humanitarian-sector representative, and former U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov lend the group a dash of gravitas—but just a dash.
The Palestinian role is reduced to a 15-member technocratic and “apolitical” governance body, led by engineer and former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath.
Details about how exactly Trump’s group plans to carry out Gaza’s reconstruction are limited thus far, but the number of real estate and finance bigwigs on the executive board indicates that it will likely be a highly privatized endeavor.
“When you look at the executive committee, I think it is absolutely unprecedented in multilateral organizations, which I guess the Board of Peace is supposed to be, even if it’s not really [multilateral] because of Trump’s dominance over it,” said Hugh Lovatt, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I think it is nonetheless pretty much unprecedented to have such explicit power exerted by private individuals who are there by virtue of their business interests.” The Prospect reached out to two members of the Gaza Executive Board with questions about how board members would keep their business interests separate from their political role, but did not receive a response by press time.
Multilateral institutions like the U.N. are supposed to operate under cooperative and humanitarian principles; representatives to such bodies are supposed to represent the interests of their nations or regions, not their private businesses.
“President Trump does not seem to do anything unless it benefits the U.S., but more specifically, unless it seems to benefit himself,” Lovatt said. “And this is not something that is exclusive to Gaza or the Board of Peace, and I think is very much interwoven into his presidency.”
Among those private individuals, Kushner’s business activities have raised significant concern. He is now the owner and principal of Affinity Partners, an investment firm that doesn’t seem to be doing that much investing, according to findings from an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee. But Kushner still profits, with Affinity pocketing a 2 percent annual management fee from almost all his investors. “He’s able to get such enormous fees, as an investor with a pretty crummy record who’s just raking in money from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf, regardless of how well he is shepherding those investments,” said Ryan Carey, chief communications adviser and deputy policy director at the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
The fund’s assets under management come almost exclusively from “the very Arab petrostates critical to the agreement and potential reconstruction—Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates,” journalist Mohamad Bazzi wrote in The Guardian. These nations have already begun investing in Syria and could be involved in rebuilding efforts in Lebanon, in a bid to exercise more influence in the region.
In Gaza, the UAE has already pledged $1.5 billion for the construction of “New Rafah” under the auspices of the BoP and the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center, which is tasked with enforcing Trump’s cease-fire and delivering aid. Plans for the new community include security checkpoints for entry and exit from New Rafah.
Neither the “New Rafah” plan nor Kushner’s vision for Gaza includes information, or even suggestions, about who exactly is going to do the day-to-day work of building shelter, distributing food aid, or providing medical care. In the past, those critical rebuilding steps would have been the purview of NGOs and U.N. agencies, which have by and large been banned in Gaza. (In previous conflicts, people whose homes had been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes would typically receive funding through the United Nations Development Program and carry out their own reconstruction.)
“What’s particularly problematic in the Gaza context is, you’re creating this very influential role for these private investment funds without the clarity, without the oversight that one should demand in such situations,” said Lovatt, referring to Kushner’s Affinity and Rowan’s Apollo. “I think in any context it would be problematic, but in the context of Gaza, I think it’s extremely problematic … [and it’s] completely outside the regulatory framework of the State of Palestine or the [Palestinian Authority] and of course, completely at odds with what the Palestinians in Gaza need.”
Gabay, the Israeli-Cypriot real estate titan and close friend of Kushner’s on the Gaza Executive Board, has joined the board “not for profit, really because of his heart he wants to do this,” Kushner said in his speech at Davos. But his intentions seem to be less financial, and more about changing the political reality on the ground; his vision is to turn Gaza into a Dubai-like destination, then enact that same vision in the West Bank.
U.N. Resolution 2803, which endorses Trump’s 20-point plan for ending Israel’s war on Gaza, doesn’t adequately provide for much transparency in its text—it just asks for progress reports every six months. It’s not clear that those reports need to list funding sources for the project, or give information about bidding and contracts for the enormous scale of work that’s projected.
That precedent already exists in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the U.S.-based enterprise formulated by a group of Israeli businessmen that took over aid distribution in parts of Gaza in May of last year. The foundation officially ceased operations in November last year amid international outcry due to the hundreds of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire at or near their aid distribution sites.
The lack of information about funding mechanisms for the GHF and the contractors working under it, Safe Reach Solutions and UG Solutions, raised concerns among Democratic members of Congress. A $30 million U.S. government contract to the GHF was approved despite enormous concerns from humanitarian professionals; additional tens of millions in funding came from undisclosed sources, reported to be Israel and a European nation.
“Once you make [aid] privatized, well, that company is working for somebody,” Anthony Aguilar, the GHF whistleblower who worked for UG Solutions, said. “There is a client-to-company, contractual relationship. It is no longer neutral or independent, or addresses the needs of those that are suffering. [Objectives] are based on the bottom dollar.”
With the humanitarian sector weakened by U.S. aid funding cuts as well as Israel’s systematic attacks on U.N. agencies, Médecins Sans Frontières, Mercy Corps, and many other aid groups, there’s a clear motive to use private companies that are not bound by humanitarian doctrine and that are accountable only to the customers who procure their services.
What’s more, these contractors are part of a complicated web of shell companies and investment firms, making their activities and finances extremely opaque. Though GHF officially ended its operations in November, it’s highly possible that the Trump administration would rely on contractors to implement the president’s plans for Gaza. Indeed, UG Solutions appears to be staffing up for a large project, with some roles requesting Arabic speakers with Egyptian and Levantine dialect skills, as well as jobs taking place in high-risk environments. A request to Patrick Milligan, head of talent acquisition at UG Solutions, for more information about these job openings was not returned by press time.
At Davos, Kushner promised more information about the rebuilding efforts in the coming weeks.
This is all while Israel continues killing people in Gaza—at least 520 since the cease-fire went into effect in October of last year. But Kushner’s speech glossed over the misery and destruction Israel has wrought on Gaza and the West Bank in the past two years. After all, as he said: “There’ll be amazing investment opportunities.”
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