Donald Trump’s Board of Peace held its first meeting Thursday in Washington. The world watched. The ambitions were stated. The challenges were real. And the honest answer to whether it will succeed is: we don’t know yet — because Thursday was just the beginning.
The board has assembled more than two dozen founding member nations. It has claimed $5 billion in reconstruction pledges — unverified. It has set out ambitions ranging from governing Gaza to challenging the UN Security Council. Trump has called it potentially the most consequential board ever assembled. The rhetoric is in place. The institution is launched. Now comes the hard part.
Hamas has not disarmed. The transitional governing committee is in Egypt. The International Stabilization Force has not deployed. Key US allies stayed home. Palestinians were excluded. Daily Israeli strikes continue. The UN estimates reconstruction at $70 billion. Expert observers have warned that without fast, tangible results on the humanitarian front, credibility will crumble.
The board’s next test will come in approximately two weeks, when a further meeting is expected to advance the work begun Thursday. Between now and then, the conditions on the ground in Gaza will either improve — more aid, better humanitarian conditions, some movement on governance — or they will not. That answer will shape the second meeting as powerfully as anything decided in Thursday’s conference rooms.
Trump’s Board of Peace is a bet — a large, public, consequential bet that American leadership, assembled in an unconventional institution, can crack a conflict that has defeated every previous effort. The first meeting has been placed. The odds are uncertain. The stakes, for two million people in Gaza and for the broader architecture of international conflict resolution, could not be higher.