Is Trump’s Board of Peace just a power play?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Coming up, Donald Trump's Board of Peace. It's lacking some key players and doesn't exactly seem focused on Gaza. So what is it for? Donald Trump, international peacemaker. That's certainly how he likes to style himself, even if he happens to be invading Venezuela or licking his lips in Greenland's direction. By his count, he's brought an end to at least eight wars, including that between Hamas and Israel. And to sort out the humanitarian disaster that is Gaza, he's assembled what he calls the Board of Peace. Well, today, the board's first members took their seats. Others who've been invited, like the UK, are considering their options.

0:49The property developer president believes that to achieve peace, you need to build. His vision of the Strip feels very Las Vegas. All high-rise condos and retail opportunities leading to piles of cash. Right now, though, it's little more than a pile of rubble. So from that standing start, what can the Board of Peace achieve? And what does it mean for the people of Gaza? Back on the podcast, our Middle East correspondent, Adam Parsons. Adam, just remind us, what was this Board of Peace originally conceived to do? This is all part of the Gaza peace plan, which has no fewer than four different layers of bureaucracy.

1:28At one end are a group of what they call technocrats, basically Palestinian leaders who are supposed to be seeing how things play out on the ground in Gaza. And at the other end is this, the Board of Peace, which sits at the top with Donald Trump as the chairman, and is then a collection of other international leaders who are supposed to come up with a strategy, with big thoughts about how Gaza can be rebuilt and to grapple with a giant geopolitical question. All very laudable, but it does feel, to me at least, that the Board of Peace's remit has been somewhat expanded. And it has, there's no doubt.

2:07When this idea first came along, it was to do with Gaza. It has been pretty opaque in its creation. but the charter, which hasn't been published, but which some people have seen, and I'm one of them, doesn't really focus on Gaza at all. You look at that charter, you look at what Donald Trump wants, and it's very clear this isn't limited to Gaza, and this is about challenging the role of the United Nations, or at the very least adding to the United Nations, and trying to impose a sort of different world order, but led by Donald Trump. And I think that is something you have to have right at the top of your mind, that this organisation would have Donald Trump as the chair and the rules within the charter about how you change the chairman and who succeeds the chairman are very much in favour of a kind of continuity.

3:04I don't want to say it's a Trump family creation, that Donald Trump, when he stopped being the chairman, will have the right to nominate his successor. I'm really confused. Is this a United States project or a United Nations project? I thought it was set up under a Security Council resolution. Yes, it's set up with a UN mandate, but that UN mandate is all about the Gaza peace plan of which this is an element. And I think a lot of that UN backing was based on hope, Hope was based on momentum and was really based on the fact that the peace plan and this ceasefire that came with it was a better place for Gaza to be than that constant grind of war and enormous death.

3:50Now, at the time when the UN mandate was granted, when the resolution was passed, to be blunt, we knew precious little about the Board of Peace. There are massive holes in our knowledge around it. So it has got UN backing. But this is not just a US initiative, but a Donald Trump initiative. He is right at the heart of it. So how exactly does one go about becoming a member of the Board of Peace, Adam? I mean, I've seen reports talking about, well, look, if you pony up$1 billion, you get entry to it. So how do you become a member is, A, you have to be invited by the chairman. And the number of countries who have been invited is certainly US officials were talking about 50.

4:35I think it may be higher than that. You don't have to give a billion dollars. But if you don't, then there are limits to your term, three years that you get to be a member. Whereas if you do hand over a billion dollars, then you are a permanent member of the Board of Peace. I mean, so many questions, not least what happens to those billion dollars? How will they be used? Who's going to audit the finances of this organisation? Walk us through it then, Adam, because we know who the chairman of the board is. But currently, who are the board members? It's a variety. Some are in this region where I'm at the moment in the Middle East.

5:20So the UAE, Saudi Arabia were both present today. I would expect Israel to join the Board of Peace as well. So fairly strong backing from the Middle East. Turkey is going to be on that board as well. Now, we already knew that from the European Union, Hungary had long since signed up. Viktor Orban is one of Donald Trump's biggest fans. I understand Bulgaria is probably going to join as well. I would be amazed if any other EU nations jumping into action yet. Then there are the likes of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Morocco. These are nations who've long since expressed interest in this. Azerbaijan, Pakistan, who are suggested to be a nation that has also agreed to put in a billion dollars.

6:10So there are sort of blend of some with a democratic tradition and others who are pretty authoritarian in their leadership. But what is lacking, to be honest, are Western democracies and also Canada and Australia and those who you would say embrace a sort of form of Western democracy in the wider world. So often these days, Adam, on this podcast, I feel like I've been taking crazy pills. But an invite to the Board of Peace has been extended, as I understand it, to Vladimir Putin of Russia. Yeah, I think sometimes you have to imagine the world through the eyes of Donald Trump rather than necessarily through anyone else's perspective.

6:54And from the president's view, Vladimir Putin is a crucial player who he wants to keep close to. And so he has invited him. And yes, all the caveats that this is the man who invaded Ukraine coming up for four years ago, who has been subject to sanctions, incredible criticism, allegations of authoritarianism. This is a man who Donald Trump thinks should be on the board of peace. Now, it's understood that the Kremlin is considering that. But to add to the complexity of this, it's also understood that President Putin is considering putting a billion dollars into the kitty, but only on the condition that that billion dollars comes from Russian assets that have been frozen by sanctions because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

7:48That is something that most people are going to struggle to get their head around. For the time being, at least, the United Kingdom is not joining up to the Board of Peace. Why is that? Because of Putin's involvement, and it will be the same, not just for the UK. I don't see any way that Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and so many other of the European NATO members, particularly the Western European ones, are going to join up. It's very hard to see Norway or Sweden or Finland or the Baltic nations joining up at the moment when they think there is a chance that Vladimir Putin will be on this board of peace because they have invested so much in the coalition of the willing and other instruments to oppose Russia to support Ukraine.

8:38that this very fluid diplomacy that they see Donald Trump engaging in, where yesterday's enemy is today's friend, just doesn't play well with many of these people. But I think the important thing that's happened over the past few days is that European nations do feel as if they've stood up to Trump on Greenland. I think that may have empowered them a bit. And they simply don't feel the need to join this board of peace. Certainly don't feel the need to chuck a billion dollars into the pot. Whether that will stay the same or whether, as has happened recently, there will be some kind of movement around it.

9:16We'll have to wait and see. But I don't feel at the moment as if Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands are going to throw the lot in. Georgia Maloney, the Italian prime minister, a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, she hasn't joined either. And I think she could be an interesting bellwether in this. Let's try and bring this back to what was the stated purpose of the Board of Peace, sorting out Gaza. Are we any closer to actually understanding what the plan is? Donald Trump did one of his long, quite rambling speeches, which was predominantly about how well he had done as president of the US.

9:49Steve Wyckoff, who is an old golfing buddy of Donald Trump and has now become one of his two roaming diplomatic advisers, stood up and effectively said, we're working hard and was quite emotional. And then the second one of his roaming diplomats stood up. It's a guy called Jared Kushner. Now, Jared Kushner is Donald Trump's son-in-law. And Jared Kushner is also a financier, pretty successful financier with a strong basis of work here in the Middle East. And Jared Kushner made a politician's speech. He spoke quite fluently. He was at one stage critical of the Israelis, which is unusual when Americans make speeches about the Middle East.

10:31And then he put up three slides about the redevelopment of Gaza. Now, these are sort of computer generated images and they are glossy plans for very American style, huge tower blocks and glossy redevelopments. The new Gaza was one of the slogans that was up there. But what he also was talking about was calling for calm, saying the next hundred days will be critical. and really said, can everybody stop trying to undermine our best intentions? Can the Israelis stop criticising Qataris and Turkeys? He praised a man called Ali Shah, who's the head of the Palestinian committee, technocratic committee.

11:13This was a much more sort of calming speech, effectively saying, you may not all be happy, but we are trying our best. Now, that's one thing to say that for a very rich man, son-in-law of the US president to say that in Davos of all places. By some estimates, even just taking the rubble out of Gaza is going to take between three and five years. So these images of skyscrapers and super yachts and beautiful harbours are an awfully long way away. I think what we're seeing is images of aspirations, but there will be those who say an aspiration is better than nothing. But Donald Trump himself pointed at those images and described it as, what did he say?

11:54Yeah, look at this beautiful piece of property. I mean, that gives us an insight into how he feels peace is going to be brought about. Donald Trump's a real estate developer. That's where he comes from. That's where he thinks he has expertise. I mean, Wyckoff and Trump met because they're both working in property. They are trained to see things in a pretty transactional way. And that will seem heartless. And yet, in this region, among leaders that they talk to here among diplomats across the Middle East, you do get the message that that kind of works, that there are plenty of people here who look down and are quite happy to see things in a pound shillings and pence perspective of if I invest here, what is going to be my return?

12:40It is about a sort of quasi business transactional approach to politics rather than necessarily a dogmatic, religious sort of approach. A lot of us were shocked when Tony Blair was named as the only non-American citizen on the executive board, that's the one below the board of peace, because of his role in the Iraq war. And there is a huge assumption that many people in the Middle East will loathe Tony Blair. Well, many do, but some see him as actually a pragmatist, as somebody who drove through a peace plan in Northern Ireland and somebody who understands that transactional, I give, you give, we both get back approach to policy and to long-term planning.

13:25This is a region where long-term planning has, for many leaders, been central to their view. And they look at Gaza, they look at some of these images, and what they see is that same concept, long-term planning being mirrored back at them. What does all this, I suppose you could call it the soft launch of the Board of Peace, what does that mean for the peace process itself, which of late does appear to have stalled? That is a very good question. And the answer might be lots and the answer might be nothing at all, because so much of the peace process is piecemeal. So not all of the hostages have been returned.

14:02All of the living ones have actually long since come back. But there is the remains of one dead hostage, a man called Rangavili, have not come back. And there are many in Israeli politics who think that that is wholly unacceptable. There are others who will say nothing can happen until Hamas disarms. And then that raises the question about what does disarming actually mean? Disarming Hezbollah in Lebanon has been incredibly complex and still hasn't necessarily been achieved. is the question of demilitarizing Gaza. What does that look like on the ground? At the moment, half of Gaza is occupied by Israeli forces and the peace plan says that they have to withdraw, which is an enormous stretch.

14:45I don't see that happening anytime soon. More aid will need to be brought in and construction, of course, has to happen. So the peace plan itself is full of objectives, some of which are going to be incredibly difficult to fulfil and are going to take a long, long time. And at the moment, there still is no international stability force to go into Gaza and to enforce some kind of order. So I think if you're on a spectrum, Neil, where out here is Jared Kushner's images of skyscrapers and beautiful parks and people paying huge amounts of money to go on holiday, and at this end is the bombed-out wasteland during the war, right now we maybe have moved a few millimetres in that direction, but to get to here is a vastly long journey.

15:37Adam, many thanks. That's your lot for this edition of The Daily. For more on Donald Trump's Board of Peace, just head to the website skynews.com. We're back tomorrow.