Al-Qalam 
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to be on the Board of Peace, but is unhappy with the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar, writes Sean Mathews.
President Donald Trump wants his new peace board to make a big splash at the Davos Economic Forum, but his test case for this new Trump stamp of diplomacy, the de facto internationalisation of Gaza, is rankling Israel.
At the time of going to press, Trump was set to unveil his “Board of Peace” at the Davos Forum in Switzerland.
The board includes key Trump allies such as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff. American billionaire Marc Rowan is a member, and King Mohammed VI of Morocco has become the first world leader to confirm his participation.
Gaza is not mentioned in the board’s charter, but Marwa Maziad, a Middle East and security expert at the University of Maryland, told Middle East Eye that Trump clearly envisions the destroyed enclave being one of the board’s first “franchises”.
“He wants to take this board concept to Gaza, then Venezuela and Ukraine. He is going to go around to different countries and tell them to join the board or face war and conflict,” Maziad said.
Some figures, like Rowan, Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, sit on Trump’s Board of Peace and an executive board established to govern Gaza.
But Aaron David Miller, a former State Department negotiator, told MEE that, aside from Trump’s fondness for bringing corporate titles to diplomacy, the peace board is a distraction from the painstaking work of shoring up a fragile ceasefire in Gaza.
“This is a misplaced solution to a problem we don’t have,” Miller told MEE. “The Board of Peace is not going to move Gaza from Phase 1 to Phase 2.”
“In Gaza, you need Trump to exercise his leverage over Israel and the Qataris, Turks and Egyptians to exercise their influence over Hamas,” he added.
Miller said that Trump’s penchant to bring new international players into Gaza would mark a defeat for Netanyahu.
“If you could internationalise Gaza, why not internationalise the occupied West Bank?” he said. “That’s the last thing Netanyahu wants.”
Maziad said Trump has “spread the wealth” in his Gaza board.
In addition to Rowan, Yakir Gabay, a Cypriot-Israeli tycoon close to Kushner, was given a seat, as was a senior official from the UAE, the Arab state closest to Israel.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing back against the inclusion of two senior officials from Turkey and Qatar on the board: Qatari diplomat Ali al-Thawadi and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
“We have a certain disagreement with our friends in the United States regarding the composition of the advisory council,” Netanyahu’s office said on Monday. “The Prime Minister has instructed the foreign affairs minister to contact the US Secretary of State on this matter.”
Qatar hosts Hamas’s leadership at the request of the US, and Erdogan has praised Hamas members as “freedom fighters”. Across the wider region, both Fidan and Thawadi have been on the frontlines, frustrating some of Netanyahu’s key power plays.
Fidan is a suave former Turkish spymaster who has been instrumental in rehabilitating Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, where Netanyahu is angling for influence.
Thawadi is a steely Qatari diplomat who helped broker the Gaza ceasefire. He was photographed discreetly sitting in the White House when Netanyahu was forced to call the emir of Qatar in September to apologise for an attack on Hamas negotiators in Doha.
Maziad told MEE the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar on the board is worrying for Israel because it could foreshadow the deployment of Turkish and Qatari troops as part of an “International Stabilisation Force” in the future.
The force received a United Nations mandate in November but has yet to deploy, as Arab and Muslim countries baulk at demands from Israel that they confront Hamas, which has yet to disarm.
