Donald Trump said Sunday that member states of his Board of Peace have pledged $5 billion toward reconstruction and humanitarian efforts in Gaza.
Countries will also send thousands of personnel to “maintain Security and Peace for Gazans,” the president wrote on Truth Social. The pledge will be officially announced during the board’s inaugural meeting on February 19 at the United States Institute of Peace (which the State Department announced had been renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace last December).
While it remains unclear which of the more than 20 members would make the pledge, the Associated Press reported that Indonesia said up to 8,000 troops would be ready for deployment to Gaza by June.
Trump posted his message the same day Israeli forces reportedly killed at least 12 Palestinians in airstrikes. Gaza’s civil defense agency, an emergency service and rescue force, said five people were killed and several others were injured when a strike targeted a tent sheltering displaced families.
According to the Guardian, the Al-Shifa and Nasser hospitals confirmed they received the bodies of at least seven people.
An Israeli military official said that the airstrikes were conducted in response to Hamas violations of the ceasefire agreement, where several armed individuals allegedly crossed a border line that went into effect last October. The “yellow line” splits Gaza in two: one under Israeli military control and one where Palestinians face fewer mobility limitations but are still threatened by displacement and airstrikes.
Since the US-brokered ceasefire was declared, Israel has killed at least 601 Palestinians and injured 1,607, according to the latest numbers from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. As Daniel Levy, the president of the US/Middle East Project, a policy institute focusing on advancing a dignified Israeli-Palestinian peace, told my colleague Noah Lanard just days after the October ceasefire agreement, there is “no actual plan” for peace.
Although Trump’s Board of Peace was initially seen as an international organization that would end the war in Gaza, the organization’s charter does not mention Gaza, instead increasing its scope worldwide to “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
And as Mother Jones’ Washington bureau chief, David Corn, wrote earlier this month, the Board of Peace has since devolved into a global slush fund where countries can upgrade a three-year term to indefinite membership by paying $1 billion.
Many of the US’ top allies in Europe have declined invitations, considering the Board of Peace a way to swerve accountability to the United Nations. Many have also condemned the organization as its charter designates Trump as the sole leader, as well as the US representative.
“Nobody should be above the law,” Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign affairs chief, told US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz on Friday regarding Trump virtually controlling all decision-making in the international organization. “If countries are treated equally, there’s less chance for war and tyranny.”
But as Trump wrote in his Sunday social media post: “The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman.”
