Chris Sutherland surveys the role of the Board of Peace and the likeliest path the Gaza genocide will follow next.

On 6^th July 2026 Hamas formally stepped down as the government of Gaza. The announcement was made by Ismail Al-Thawabta on behalf of the ‘Gaza Emergency Committee’ in the ruins of Gaza City.¹  Hamas then invited President Trump’s Board of Peace (BOP)’s ‘National Committee for the Administration of Gaza’ (NCAG) to take over the machinery of administration, saying that existing administrative personnel on the ground would remain in post to facilitate their entry into Gaza. Hamas’s historic announcement went largely unreported, buried in the inside pages.  The BOP said it was ‘noted’, whilst Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, described it as a ‘stunt’.

The NCAG is the technocratic body of 15 ‘experts’ nominated to take over the running of Gaza on behalf of President Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ (BOP) which was founded with great pomp and ceremony in January 2026.²  People will remember Trump sitting on his throne in front of invited delegates last January and inviting the uninvited to pay a fee of $1bn cash should they wish to join.³

Faces at the inaugural BOP gathering in Davos included a rogue’s gallery of despots and tyrants including most of the Middle East’s dictators, as well as fascists like Argentina’s Javier Milei, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Belarus’s Lukashenka, and to top it all the wanted ‘war criminal’ himself, Benjamin Netanyahu, appearing alongside special guest, Tony Blair, the butcher of Iraq – all paying homage to Donald J Trump sitting like a latter-day Emperor.

Trump rounded on the United Nations saying the BOP was the new international world order, replacing the UN itself, to which the UN cravenly responded by voting to mandate the BOP to implement Gaza’s Roadmap to peace and reconstruction with Resolution 2803. What!? A resolution mandating two of the warring parties, Israel and the US, to dictate the terms of peace in Gaza?

Middle East Eye Editor David Hearst writes:

‘To invite the same cast of characters who allowed Israel to expand to the point at which Gaza exploded and expect them to end the conflict is more than just insane, it’s criminal … Trump is running Gaza and the world like a mafia boss.’⁴

There seemed to be two visions for a post-war Gaza. One, sold to the Arab and Muslim world, was of Gaza being flooded with aid and the international community pouring in to rescue a ravaged people, to re-build a ravaged land, with Gazans being allowed to remain in their homeland free from Israeli threats as part of a wider framework for Palestine and the Middle East. The other was peddled by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Netanyahu, and portrayed in the Gaza Riviera project. The unelected Kushner delivered his ‘Gaza Master Plan’ presenting glossy diagrams of ‘down town’ Gaza with its development phases and multi-billion beach fronts – seemingly without any Gazans present.

Middle East Eye’s Jonathon Cook described the BOP as an ‘Updated East India Company’ whereby ‘Billionaires and their hangers-on will openly decide the fate of weak nations based on the power elites’ naked, predatory instincts to make money.’⁵

The BOP was supposed to be inundated with cash from eager donor countries to raise an initial $7bn budget.  The CNAG was then appointed to carry things out, overseen by their special Envoy, the former Bulgarian MEP Nikolay Mladenov, a former UN peace envoy in Iraq. A special seat on the BOP was reserved for Tony Blair.⁶

The basic model for the 20-point Roadmap in October 2025 was for the warring parties to declare an indefinite ceasefire.  A series of phases would see the release of hostages in exchange for prisoners, aid flooding in, and Israel withdrawing to a buffer line. The second phase was to involve Hamas giving way to a new civil authority backed by newly trained police, and guaranteed by an ‘International Stabilisation Force’ made up of contingents from overseas countries. Negotiations over deconfliction included disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal, running in tandem with various programmes of reconstruction.

That was six months ago. But what about now?

When the ceasefire was signed on 10^th October, everyone expected the guns to fall silent and for international relief to pour in, to help the two million survivors traumatised by two years of genocide, and allow the seriously sick and wounded to be allowed out for treatment. Everyone expected Israel to fall behind their self-declared Yellow buffer zone. Journalists were expected to be allowed in and Rafah fully opened, with heavy machinery also allowed in to start clearing the rubble, and international relief agencies permitted to begin their restorative work. There was even talk of landing ships on the beaches delivering emergency aid such as field kitchens and more field hospitals. The Erez and Karni crossings would open for freight. The huge warehouses in Jordan and Egypt would finally be allowed to shift the millions of tonnes of embargoed aid.

A new Palestinian Authority-style police force would take over from Hamas and the technocrats on the CNAG, and be allowed to form a new interim government and civil administration. Hamas intimated that they would be prepared to make way and give up their heavy weaponry, retaining only light arms for self-defence.  They declared that they would be prepared to disarm as part of an internationally supervised process, quoting the example of the disarmament process in Northern Ireland as part of the Good Friday peace agreement.

With reconstruction and peace assured, a new society would emerge and the question of self-determination of Palestinians put firmly back on the agenda. Above all, Gazans would remain in their homeland. There was to be no forced migration or transfer of population. Gaza would be for the Palestinians, free from the threat of Israeli attack, guaranteed by the ‘International Stabilisation Force’ made up of international peace-keepers.

But this isn’t what happened.

Firstly, Israel remained in occupation behind an encroaching buffer zone controlling 55% of Gaza.  Two, they began a process of extending their ‘Yellow Line’ of boundary markers, declaring these areas free fire zones, and shooting and killing anyone who entered, seizing more and more territory and undertaking a programme of mass demolitions behind the buffer zone. Second, there have been daily ceasefire violations, almost exclusively by Israel, involving sniper fire, drone and air attacks, artillery strikes and shelling by sea.  The BOP has said nothing about this.

The blockade of Gaza continued, restricting food, fuel, medicines and supplies, denying entry of heavy lifting equipment and the thousands of mobile homes that had been intended for Gaza to relieve the misery of living in tents and amongst ruins.

Bit by bit Gaza’s Yellow Line became a new Orange Line, eating up whole areas of the enclave, 60%, 65%, now 70% by instruction from Netanyahu, the beleaguered, starved population having to live in ever smaller and more restricted areas around Gaza City, Deir al-Balah and al-Mawasi.

Behind the Yellow/Orange line there is a plethora of new forts and defensive positions behind 25km of earth Berms. Forensic Architecture’s satellite imaging from Planet Labs has detailed and mapped 48 new forts verified by ‘before’ and ‘after’ imaging.⁷ It shows whole areas of southern and eastern Gaza completely flattened into a desert landscape, and a massive fortification at the Bani Suehila crossroads in Eastern Khan Younis. Where once there was city, now there is nothing but ruin, the Mediterranean Sea clearly visible in the distance.⁸

The facts of the ceasefire are this:⁹

·       3,465 violations in 260 days

·       1,059 killed and 3,429 injured

·       Just 35% of the agreed aid allowed in

·       156,000 projected – just 55,000 allowed in

·       113 Palestinians reported kidnapped by IDF

·       Just 8,016 out of 21,000 allowed out for treatment

In a recent trip to Amman, the International Development Committee Chair, Sarah Champion, reported 20 full-to-bursting warehouses of international aid, rotting after being refused transit by Israel. The Rafah Crossing still not restored and COGAT still obstructing aid. The same calculated starvation as a weapon of war against a civilian population causing mass hunger, thirst, sickness, disease and death.

The current death toll (7.6.26) stands at 73,100 killed and 173,575 injured with an estimated 10,000- 20,000 missing and unaccounted for. Statistical studies by the Lancet using comparative conflicts to calculate ‘Excess Deaths’ put the figures much higher, by as much as 35%.¹⁰ Israel’s constant bulldozing and flattening of Gaza means they’ve also covered up the forensic evidence of their war crimes.

Forensic Architecture satellite imaging in December 2025 revealed something far more sinister. The areas around Rafah, Mawasi and Khan Younis have been carefully monitored since the days when the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Fund food massacres where an estimated 2,600 were killed as Palestinians were herded into food collection zones and some 19,000 were injured.

Forensic Architecture have spotted the imprint of two holding camps for Palestinians.¹¹ Estimated at around 20,000-capacity each, they are intended to be used to screen and filter Palestinians prior to so-called ‘voluntary emigration’. Those refusing to enter will be left to rot in their tent cities amongst the ruins, while the holding camps tempt starving people with the prospect of food and care, to enter dystopian Green and Red Zones but never be allowed back.

‘Haaretz’ recently reported on a top level meeting of its Security Council, where members including Mossad, Shin Bet and top military brass were ‘encouraging voluntary emigration.¹² ‘The Jerusalem Post’ recently reported another top level meeting of the IDF Southern Command looking at ways to enforce the disarmament of Hamas in conjunction with the BOP’s ‘International Stabilisation Force’ currently under US command at Kiryat Gat in southern Israel and working in tandem with the IDF.¹³  The ISF has just taken delivery of armoured vehicles and equipment.  The problem is that this is primarily a US force, not the international force originally envisioned back in September 2025 and no other countries appear to be involved.  This is in itself a violation of the Roadmap and not likely to be welcomed by the local Gazan population or the Resistance.  The US and Israel working together would never be looked on as an acceptable neutral force.

Moreover members of the meeting bemoaned the fact that no country had as yet come forward to accept displaced Gazans, nor was there much likelihood of this in the aftermath of Israel and the US attacking Iran and the war in Lebanon. One casualty of the wars is that the BOP has received scant funding from the Gulf. The much vaunted $7bn simply hasn’t materialised.

There have also been problems training a Palestinian Police Force in Egypt. The UAE has given $100m to train a police force but take-up has been primarily Jordanians and Egyptians, again reinforcing the perception of an alien police force being imposed on the population of Gaza. The UAE are using their own private contractors rather than going through the BOP – one of the disadvantages of outsourcing! Meanwhile the ‘Times of Israel’ report training sessions for the NCAG in Egypt and Cyprus suggesting they are nowhere near ready to enter Gaza to start their work. One of the training bodies is the Tony Blair Institute, led, of course, by a leading figure in the Quartet that blockaded Gaza in 2007.¹⁴  

Indeed the whole six months of the BOP’s UN mandate has passed without any real progress.  Hamas stepping down as the governing entity is therefore designed to hurry the process along.  To deflect criticism Nikolay Mladenov and Israel Katz are continuing to blame Hamas for not disarming, when both know that Israel is on the verge of launching fresh attacks. Netanyahu is up for election in October and needs his ‘forever wars’ to stay in power and avoid jail on corruption charges.

In the meantime Israel entrenches further into Gaza, looking even more likely never to withdraw. Smotrich has boasted he has three settlements just waiting to go into northern Gaza. The likeliest path for the Gaza Genocide will be continued Israeli encroachment, a renewal of the offensive against the civilian population, the creation of processing camps to effect enforced migration and using the BOP/ISF as cover and as an active participant in the ethnic cleaning of Gaza. Those who don’t move will be starved, killed and injured, surviving amidst the rubble of their tented cities, and all with a United Nations mandate.

Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza. The peacemakers and international aid must be allowed in to begin the task of reconstruction, along with journalists.  Palestinians must be free to determine what kind of society they wish to live in, protected against future aggression by international guarantee.

Chris Sutherland is a lifelong socialist, living in Cupar. He is a member of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

1. Reuters ‘Hamas dissolves Gaza Government: Israel dismisses move as a ‘stunt’’ 6.7.26.  Drop Site News ‘Hamas Government dissolves’ 6.7.26. ↩︎
2. Middle East Eye ‘Technocratic Committee overseeing Gaza transition revealed’ 15.1.26. They included Ali Shaath (Planning), Omar Shamali (Communications), Abdul Ashour (Agriculture), Aed Yaghi (Health), Aed Ramadan (Industry & Economy), Jabr al-Daour (Education), Bashir al-Rayes (Finance), Ali Barhoum (Water & Municipalities) + 6 others ↩︎
3. New York Times ‘$1bn in cash buys a permanent seat on Trump’s Board of Peace’ 18.1.26. ↩︎
4. MEE ‘Trump is running Gaza and the world like a mafia boss’ David Hearst, 20.1.26. ↩︎
5. Jonathan Cook ‘Trump’s BOP is the nail in Gaza’s coffin’ 23.1.26 (JC Blog). ↩︎
6. Al Jazeera ‘Trump names Tony Blair, Jared Kushner to Gaza Board of Peace’ 16.1.26. ↩︎
7. Drop Site News ‘Israel is preparing for a permanent presence in Gaza’ 20.12.25. ↩︎
8. Forensic Architecture 24.5.26.  Drop Site News ‘Israel has physically divided Gaza’ 25.5.26. I have maps, diagrams and photographs in my journals. ↩︎
9. Al Jazeera’s AJ Labs ‘Explainer: how many times has Israel violated the Gaza Ceasefire’ 30.6.25. ↩︎
10. Lancet Global Health Report 4.4.26 looked at comparative statistics covering the period 7.10.23-5.1.25. The recorded death total then was 49,090 which Lancet modelling re-calculated at 75,200, with Excess deaths at 8,540 and Non-Violent deaths at 16,300. ↩︎
11. Forensic Architecture Planet Labs 26.2.26  ‘Rafah concentration camp preps’ (photo in my journal pp. 2525).  Middle East Eye ‘Concentration Camp: Israel’s planned new city in Rafah’ 10.7.25. Al Jazeera ‘Israel’s plans for Rafah camp in Gaza’ 28.1.26. ↩︎
12. Haaretz ‘Top Israeli Defence officials call urgent meeting on plan to displace Gazans’ 23.6.26. Middle East Eye ‘ Israeli officials discuss renewed push to expel Palestinians from Gaza.’ 24.6.26. ↩︎
13. Jerusalem Post ‘IDF working to strengthen ISF’ 4.7.26. ↩︎
14. Times of Israel ‘ BOP finalising plans for Gaza but implementation timeline in the air’ 1.7.26. ↩︎