The World Economic Forum in Davos became the stage for a disruptive proposal when US President Donald Trump announced a ‘Board of Peace’ framed as a permanent, pay-to-participate global conflict-resolution body emerging from Gaza’s ceasefire and reconstruction efforts. While some governments feel compelled to join to avoid alienating Washington, critics—from Australia to France—warn that the initiative echoes colonial-era mandates, concentrates unprecedented authority in U.S. hands, and risks eroding the United Nations and established norms of international law.

Gaza today stands at a fork in history that few places endure and even fewer survive with dignity intact. More than 70 per cent of homes have been damaged or destroyed, basic infrastructure has collapsed, and the World Bank estimates economic output has contracted by well over half since the war began. The figures are brutal, yet numbers alone fail to capture the deeper truth: Gaza is not merely a site of devastation, but a test of whether the international system still knows how to rebuild hope after catastrophe.

Reconstruction, in this moment, is not about concrete and cranes alone. It is about whether global diplomacy can move beyond managing conflict and instead summon the courage to design a future. 

The emerging debate around Gaza’s recovery—shaped by ceasefire arrangements, new governance proposals and unprecedented levels of international attention—offers a narrow but real opening. History suggests such windows do not stay open for long.

Past reconstructions show both the promise and the peril. Europe’s Marshall Plan mobilised roughly US$13 billion between 1948 and 1951, about US$150 billion in today’s terms, and helped anchor not just recovery but a new political order. Bosnia and Herzegovina received more than US$5 billion in post-war aid during the late 1990s, yet fragile institutions and unresolved political fractures continue to haunt it. Iraq absorbed hundreds of billions in reconstruction spending after 2003, much of it squandered through poor coordination and corruption. 

Gaza sits uneasily among these precedents: smaller in scale, but more politically charged than any of them.

What makes Gaza different is not only the depth of destruction, but the density of global involvement. According to the United Nations, rebuilding Gaza could cost between US$40 and US$50 billion, a sum well within global capacity if political will aligns. Gulf states alone........

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