Palestinians have no say and no rights while perpetrators of genocide determine their future
The logo for the new Board of Peace, launched on Jan. 22 at the World Economic Forum in Davis, speaks volumes about the world according to Trump. It mimics the UN logo: both feature olive branches surrounding a land mass. In the Trump version the world map depicted in the UN logo has been reduced to North America and instead of the UN’s blue, it is a gleaming gold.
An “alternative to the UN?”
So far, 26 countries out of the 60 or so that received invitations have either signed up or said they would be doing so. Among them are Israel (whose prime minister skipped the Davos Forum out of fear of arrest), Türkiye and Qatar which Israel tried to exclude and many autocratic regimes. To date, Hungary is the sole European country to accept Trump’s invitation. Canada, whose prime minister, Mark Carney, spoke bluntly at Davos about the “rupture” in the world order without directly mentioning the rapacious hegemon threatening to take over Greenland, has the distinction of being the only country whose invitation Trump has rescinded.
Did the countries that signed on have a clear idea about Board of Peace operations and goals or did they just want to be on Trump’s team? Its charter bears scant resemblance to the mandate of Trump’s ‘peace plan’ endorsed by the UN Security Council on Nov. 17, 2025 (resolution 2803). It makes no mention of Gaza, Israel or Hamas. Rather than lasting for three years as originally conceived, it shall “dissolve at such time as the Chairman considers necessary or appropriate.” Member states can serve a term of three years free of charge, or stay indefinitely if they “contribute more than USD $1,000,000,000 in cash funds to the Board of Peace within the first year of the Charter’s entry into force.” That’s $1 billion from each country, which is reportedly not for reconstruction and which the Chairman will oversee. In addition to all the other powers given him by the Charter, Trump as Chairman (possibly for life) “is the final authority regarding the meaning, interpretation, and application of this Charter.”
With a military onslaught on Iran appearing imminent, Trump may breathe new life into George Orwell’s 1984 slogan, ‘War is peace.’ On Jan. 30 he dispatched to Israel a further $6.5 billionin military aid without Congressional approval.
“A parody of a colonial body”
The first draft resolution of the Board of Peace, dated Jan. 22, 2026, outlines the hierarchical structure and the members of the committees which will be imposed on Gaza in order “to create a deradicalized terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors.” White House chief of staff Susie Wiles has been added to both the Executive Board and Gaza Executive Board described in the last Brief. Martin Edelman, an international real estate attorney who is an advisor to the UAE (which invested over $200 million in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm), now appears on the Executive Board. Pro-settler Aryeh Lightstone and former investment banker Joshua Gruenbaum have been added as ‘senior advisors’ in charge of day-to-day strategy and operations. Lightstone had been involved in the creation of the murderous Gaza Humanitarian Foundation which cost thousands of Palestinians their lives.
At the very bottom of the hierarchy outlined in the resolution is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), the technocratic committee of Palestinians headed by Dr. Ali Sha’ath. It had no input in planning for Gaza’s future and its only role is to carry out directives from above. To date, Israel has blocked it from entering the Gaza Strip.
While the resolution asserts that the Board will redevelop the Strip “for the benefit of the people of Gaza,” only people and NGOs with no association with Hamas “or other terror groups” can “participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance activities in Gaza.” Individuals who fail to be approved by the Executive Board and High Representative Nicolay Mladenov will be barred from accessing “humanitarian zones and controlled civilian-protection corridors.”
In the words of Mahmoud Shehada, the Board of Peace system “does not pave the way for a Palestinian state. It opens the door to dismantling it through administrative solutions: Gaza as an internationally managed unit, the West Bank on a parallel path of fragmentation, while Israel retains the right to intervene or obstruct whenever it chooses – without bearing the costs of occupation.” And, it should be added, without being subjected to any accountability for its genocidal actions and war crimes.
Planning for “catastrophic success”
This is how Jared Kushner described the plan for ‘New Gaza’ which he presented to the Davos forum. The plan features ‘New Rafah’ with 100,000 housing units (mainly for workers), 75+ medical facilities, a transportation hub for trains, a port and airport, a coastal strip of Gulf-like futuristic towers and tourist facilities, an industrial complex, data centers, and off-shore natural gas platforms, all to be built within three years.
In the words of Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian-American who played a key role in funding Gaza’s soup kitchens, “To see AI-generated renderings of luxury high-rises and ‘coastal tourism zones’ atop the literal ruins of our lives is not a vision of peace. It is a blueprint for erasure…This plan is designed to replace our indigenous people and society with a capitalist dystopia where we are merely a cheap labor force behind militarized walls.”
The UAE is reportedly planning to fund the first reconstructed community in the Rafah area, which will subject residents to biometric data collection and other intrusive surveillance measures.
Israel digs in to stay
While Kushner was pitching the investment opportunities in ‘New Gaza’ to the world leaders and CEOs gathered at Davis, Israel was moving ahead with its own project: establishing a permanent military presence in the 58% of Gaza that it now controls. The western part of the Gaza Strip – where Kushner hopes a coastal strip of glitzy towers will one day rise – is being cut off from the eastern portion by earth mounds along the existing location of the flexible ‘yellow line’ (explained here) and a ditch many meters deep. During the ‘ceasefire,’ Israel has built 13 military outposts within the eastern zone, bringing the total by Dec. 20, 2025 to 48, as well as several roads attaching the territory to Israel. Using satellite evidence, Forensic Architecture reported that Israel has cleared and compacted the land in the Rafah area and surrounded it by a military infrastructure. It may be where those given security clearance, including members of militias backed by Israel, will be housed.
On Jan. 26, the remains of the last hostage, Ran Gvili, were returned to Israel, removing the obstacle that Netanyahu had been invoking to delay opening the Rafah Crossing and moving to phase two of the Trump ‘peace plan’ when Israel would be required to hand over territory it currently controls to the yet-to-be-formed International Stabilization Force. The prime minister immediately told the Knesset that “the next stage is not reconstruction, it is the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.” Just two days later Haaretz reported that the government would allow the construction of so-called New Rafah “after receiving a commitment from Hamas to disarm within 100 days.” But according to this penetrating analysis by Muhammad Shehada, Netanyahu is bent on sabotaging phase two and cementing “perpetual occupation.”
Bloodbath ongoing during the sham ceasefire
“We maintained the cease-fire, delivered record levels of humanitarian aid – great aid,” Trump declared at Davos. “You used to hear all the people who were starving; it was terrible. You don’t hear it anymore.”
What are the actual facts? The toll of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the ‘ceasefire’ now is at least 520 (over 100 of them children), with nearly 1,400 people wounded. In 27 months, Israel has exterminated over 2,700 extended Palestinian families, while 6,000 familieshave just one surviving member. By Jan. 28, the total death toll was 71,667, not including thousands of bodies still buried under rubble. On that day the Israeli military accepted Gaza Health Ministry numbers, after long denying their accuracy.
In Gaza the number keeps steadily rising. Three journalists and two 13-year-olds were among the 11 Palestinians killed on Jan. 21. On Jan. 24, three Palestinians were murdered by drones, including two teens collecting firewood, while five were killed on Jan. 29 and a further seven on Jan 30. The following day, multiple airstrikes killed at least 30 more people, many of them children. See a video of the attacks here.
Israel continues to bar foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip and on Jan. 25, the transmission tower of the first Gaza radio station to be opened since Oct. 2023 was blown up by quadcopter drones. Under US pressure to move onto phase two of the ‘peace plan’ Israel announced on Jan 30 that the Rafah Crossing would open on Feb. 2 for “limited movement only” of 150-200 people. Some residents could leave for medical treatment and those who left during the war could return if they had prior security authorization from Israel.
Meanwhile, living conditions endured by the nearly 40% of Gaza’s residents confined to flimsy tents in flood zones remain horrendous. On Jan. 27, an eleventh child - a 12-day-old baby - froze to death. Dreadful conditions have contributed to a recent outbreak of bacterial meningitis. And despite being squeezed into less than half of the western part of the Gaza Strip, at any moment residents can be ordered to move as Israel changes the location of its lethal ‘yellow line.’ As for food, the UN has reported that “the food security situation has improved and famine has been reversed,” with most families “eating at least once a day.” However, “100,000 children remain acutely malnourished and require long term care.”
Meanwhile, there are reports of huge profits being made by war profiteers, including Israeli soldiers who are smuggling goods into Gaza from Israel. Trucks carrying ‘dual use’ items such as solar panels, phones, and generators that are generally barred from Gaza have been permitted entry without being searched as ‘coordination fees’ amounting to millions of dollars per truck are reportedly paid to the military. Given their vastly inflated prices when they appear in Gaza’s markets, it is unclear who can purchase these goods.
“The Final Expulsion of Palestinians is Underway – and your Indifference Enables It”
This is the headline of an article by Israeli journalist Amira Hass who excoriated the Israeli opposition for its silence as “the official armies of God and their subcontractors are engaged in expulsion and erasure, in emulating the achievements in Gaza.” The changes in the West Bank, she wrote, “are tectonic and occur at lightning speed.”
Some examples: on Jan. 20, the Israel Land Authority demolished UNRWA’s East Jerusalem headquarters, an action condemned by the UK, France and nine other countries. Some 1,400 settler housing units are planned for the 11 acre site near Sheikh Jarrah. “I promised that we would kick the Nazi enemy out of Jerusalem,” said Aryeh King, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem.
After a legal struggle lasting decades, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that 40 families in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Batn al-Hawa in Silwan could be forced from their homes that have been claimed by the settler group Ateret Cohanim. Residents are now being served with expulsion orders.
On Jan. 25, the last family was forcibly displaced from Ras Ein al-Auja after enduring 15 years of settler harassment. According to B’Tselem, this is the 46th shepherding community to be ethnically cleansed since Oct. 7, 2023.
On Jan. 26, settlers again attacked the Ein Samia wells, stopping water from reaching 19 communities east of Ramallah. Meanwhile, across the West Bank the military and settlers have escalated their raids. In the single week of Jan. 20 – 27, there reportedly were 330 army attacks and scenes like this are regular occurrences. Settlers and soldiers conducted simultaneous “devastating pogroms” on three Masafer Yatta villages on the evening of Jan. 27. Over 1,110 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank since October 2023, 230 of them children.
The struggle for control of prominent religious sites is also intensifying. On Jan. 19, after the administration of Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque was turned over to the settlement of Kiryat Arba, the director and custodian of the Mosque were barred entry for 15 days. On Jan. 21, long-standing rules between Israel and the Jerusalem Waqf barring non Muslims from praying in the Al Aqsa Compound were changed to permit Jews to visit what they call the Temple Mount with prayer sheets, as national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has long demanded. Netanyahu, needing the support of Ben-Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party if he is to win this year’s elections, has backed the move.
Torture as a tool of occupation
The systematic use of torture against Palestinian detainees is as old as the occupation, as a 1970 report by Amnesty International and a June 19, 1977 article in the Sunday Times of London attest. Its use now appears to have achieved social acceptance. Living Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps was released by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem on Jan. 20 as a follow up to its chilling July 2024 report Welcome to Hell. Living Hell details the cruelty and ferocity with which torture and rape are routinely deployed in Israel’s prisons and detention camps, where between 9,000 and 10,000 ‘security prisoners’ are still being held after the ‘ceasefire’ releases of detainees. More than a third are held indefinitely without charges or trial and 350 are minors. The majority are from the West Bank. At least 84 Palestinians have died in Israel’s ‘torture camps’ since Oct. 2023. In addition to torture and daily dehumanization, prisoners have suffered from deliberate starvation and the withholding of medical treatment.
In a Jan. 21 Guardian piece in which a former prisoner describes the sexual violence to which he was subjected, B’Tselem head Yuli Novak comments on the lack of effective international intervention, saying that “the international community continues to grant this regime full immunity.”
By giving a free pass to Israel to carry out genocide and torture powerful world leaders have reinforced its lack of a moral compass. As B’tselem writes about torture: “Far from being carried out in the shadows, this systemic abuse is put on public display, with no attempt to conceal or obscure it. In fact, the persons in charge boast about it openly, and the entire Israeli regime is complicit….Torture of Palestinian prisoners, all of whom are labeled ‘terrorists’ by the Israeli media, has become an accepted norm.”
Nancy Murray, Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
Note: Go here to read previous briefs.
