Gaza vanishing: Trump’s Board of Peace |
Donald Trump’s Board of Peace overseeing the reconstruction of Gaza was always going to raise a host of niggling questions. From the outset, the US President made it clear he would be the helmsman of what was essentially an outfit of selected corporate overseers tilling the soil for The Donald’s posterity fund. These anointed sorts have been given the ostensible task of reviving and resuscitating a pulverised, rubble strewn enclave that has seen atrocities aplenty visited upon it. But to what end?
The envisaged structure of control over Gaza, seen as a vital part of fulfilling Trump’s 20-point plan for the territory, opens the second phase of the peace process. It’s already clear that the Board is a cheese platter of billionaires and pro-Israeli figures, with Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov being named its “High Representative”. A Gaza Executive Board will work with the Office of the High Representative and an inconsequential Palestinian technocratic body, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG). In a statement, the White House notes that the NCAG will be led by technocrat Ali Sha’ath, formerly of the Palestinian Authority, who will be charged with the tasks of restoring core public services, the reconstruction of civil institutions, “and the stabilization of daily life in Gaza, while laying the foundation for a long-term, self-sustaining governance.”
We already have a sense of how the pantomime will unfold. There are the Trump feet washers such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio; men of money such as the Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff; the family angle with the President’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; and that paragon of........