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The Trump administration has announced that Sir Tony Blair, private equity boss Marc Rowan and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner will be part of a “founding executive board” that will oversee the rehabilitation of postwar Gaza.
Washington this week sent out invitations to heads of state to join Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which he will chair, as part of his 20-point peace plan for the war-ravaged Palestinian territory. The US president has yet to announce its members.
The White House on Friday evening announced the founding “executive board” to advise the board of peace’s members. It includes no Palestinians but does include US secretary of state Marco Rubio, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank president Ajay Banga and a US national security adviser, Robert Gabriel.
Each will “oversee a defined portfolio”, such as “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilisation”, the White House said in a statement.
Blair, Britain’s former prime minister, and Kushner were previously engaged in Trump’s peace plans for Gaza. Rowan is the boss of Apollo Global Management, a large private equity firm, and has been heavily engaged in philanthropy in Israel.
Trump first proposed a Board of Peace in his 20-point peace plan for Gaza, the implementation of which has stalled since he brokered a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October.
The ceasefire ended two years of heavy bombardment in Israel’s war with Hamas, secured the release of Israeli hostages and saw an increased flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The White House said Ali Sha’ath, a former official in the Palestinian Authority, and the only Palestinian so far named in Trump’s Gaza plan, would chair a committee that will handle the day-to-day governance of Gaza. The “National Committee for the Administration of Gaza”, comprising 14 to 15 Palestinians, had been meeting in Cairo this week, a White House official said.
The committee will “oversee the restoration of core public services, the rebuilding of civil institutions, and the stabilisation of daily life in Gaza, while laying the foundation for long-term, self-sustaining governance”, according to the White House announcement.
The administration said Nickolay Mladenov, a former Bulgarian defence minister and UN envoy, would serve as “the High Representative for Gaza” and be an “on the ground link” between the board of peace and the NCAG.
According to the announcement, a separate “Gaza Executive Board”, which includes members of the founding executive board as well as a number of other figures — including Mladenov, Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan, Sigrid Kaag, UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, and Israeli-Cypriot billionaire Yakir Gabay — will be established to “support” the Office of the High Representative and the NCAG.
The White House said Aryeh Lightstone, who was instrumental in the planning and promotion of the failed aid distribution scheme known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, and Josh Gruenbaum, a former official in the US’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, would be “senior advisers” to the board of peace charged with “day-to-day strategy and operations”. The committee’s relationship to Mladenov and the NCAG was unclear.
The statement also named US military special operations commander Major General Jasper Jeffers as head of an “International Stabilisation Force”, which “will lead security operations” and “support comprehensive demilitarisation” in Gaza.
Trump had promised to announce a force staffed by soldiers from dozens of Middle Eastern and other partner nations but no country has committed military personnel to serve in Gaza. Important Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, have said they will not deploy their troops under any circumstances.
An administration official said on Friday evening that they could not yet say which nations would fill the ISF’s ranks. It was also unclear who the ISF would answer to. The official said it could be Mladenov.
The White House said it would name additional members of the executive board and Gaza executive board in the coming weeks.
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