Trump Invites Putin, Netanyahu to Join Peace Panel Mocked as ‘Board of Billionaires and War Criminals’
"This is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats," said one critic. "It has zero legitimacy."
Criticism of President Donald Trump's so-called "Board of Peace" mounted Monday after the White House invited controversial figures—including two leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes—to join the body tasked with supporting the management and reconstruction of Gaza.
Among Trump's latest invitees to the board are Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Lukashenko has repressively ruled Belarus for over 30 years and supports Putin's ongoing invasion and occupation of Ukraine, for which the Russian president is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. Netanyahu is also wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Trump—who has bombed 10 countries over his two terms in office—will chair the organization, whose executive board will also include former British leader and alleged war criminal Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank President Ajay Banga, billionaire businessman Marc Rowan, real estate investor and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner—who has publicly called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—and others.
"As if the people of Gaza have not suffered enough," Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said on Bluesky. "But Blair’s inclusion confirms the obvious—this is a board of colonial administration, run by war criminals and kleptocrats. It has zero legitimacy."
Leaders of countries including Argentina, Canada, Egypt, France, Hungary, India, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, and Turkey were also invited to join the board. So was the European Union, with whom US relations are strained over issues including Trump's tariffs and threats to invade Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory and NATO member.
Countries seeking permanent Board of Peace membership will be required to pay a $1 billion fee. A US official told the Associated Press that the fee would go toward reconstructing the obliterated Palestinian strip following more than two years of Israel's genocidal assault and siege.
There are no Palestinians on the board.
A separate National Committee for the Administration of Gaza—a 12-member technocratic body led by Palestinian official Ali Shaath and tasked with managing day-to-day affairs in the strip—held its inaugural meeting last week in Cairo as Witkoff said that Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza had begun.
While Trump's invitation letters to prospective Board of Peace members said the body will “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict," critics panned the panel as a vanity project for Trump, who fancies himself a grand peacemaker despite having bombed seven countries in the first year of his second term.
"I hope he can find time to attend Board of Peace meetings between meetings about invasions of Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, Canada, and Minneapolis," University of Denver political scientist Seth Masket said of Trump in a Bluesky post.
Former US State Department diplomat Aaron David Miller told the Washington Post Monday, “The Board of Peace is a concept tethered to a galaxy far, far away, not tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth."
"The Board of Peace is not going to be able to solve the conflict in Sudan. It is not going to do what American mediators and Europeans couldn’t do with respect to getting a ceasefire in Ukraine," he continued.
"We need on-the-ground diplomacy, not the performative creation of committees and bringing large numbers of countries and individuals into a process in which most of them will have no role," Miller added. "You need Trump. You need Netanyahu. You need Hamas’s internal and external leadership, and you need the Qataris and the Turks.”
On Monday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich condemned the Board of Peace.
“It is time to explain to the president that his plan is bad for the state of Israel and to cancel it,” Smotrich said during a ceremony to inaugurate the new Yatziv apartheid settlement in the illegally occupied West Bank. “Gaza is ours, its future will affect our future more than anyone else’s. We will take responsibility for what happens there, impose military administration, and complete the mission.”
This, after Netanyahu said earlier in a rare public rebuke of Trump that the board “was not coordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy.”
Nearly a year ago, Trump also said that the US would "own" Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of Palestinians, and transform the coastal strip into the "Riviera of the Middle East." He later clarified that he meant the "voluntary" transfer of Palestinians, which critics said amounted to a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.
The White House also reportedly circulated a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into a high-tech hub replete with a "Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands" development and an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone."
Palestinians have largely been highly skeptical of the Board of Peace.
"When I read the names of the peace council members, I felt this was not a plan that prioritizes the interests of Gaza's residents," Sameh Abu Marsa, a forcibly displaced Palestinian living in a refugee camp in Gaza City, told Xinhua Monday. "It looks more like a new form of international mandate, with decisions made externally and without participation from people on the ground."
"These names suggest political deals rather than genuine peace," he added.
Khaled Elgindy, a Palestinian scholar at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, said on X Saturday that "tellingly, there is not a single reference to Palestinians, their rights, interests, or even a future [Palestinian] state—none of which are a priority for Blair, Trump, or the so-called Board of Peace."
Others noted the continuing dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza as Israel restricts the entry of aid, as well as Israel's more than 1,200 violations of the three-month ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, at least 465 Palestinians have been killed and 1,287 wounded since the tenuous truce took effect on October 10.
"How can we talk about a peace council while Israel's violations continue here?" asked Khan Younis resident Abdul Raouf Awad.
