March 5, 2026

Gaza Peace Plan

Blurb:

President Donald Trump said Thursday that the United States will contribute $10 billion toward the Board of Peace.

Trump made his announcement during the board’s second official meeting, the first convening of the group in Washington, D.C.

“The United States is going to make a contribution of $10 billion to the Board of Peace,” said Trump. “We’ve had great support for that number and that number is a very small number when you look at that, compared to the cost of war. That’s two weeks of fighting.”

Blurb:

President Donald Trump is hosting the inaugural Board of Peace meeting on Thursday morning at 9 a.m.

The meeting will take place at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., before Trump heads to Rome, Georgia, for a speech on affordability.

The agenda for the meeting will include a discussion of how to move forward with peace in Gaza, as Israel and several Palestinian allies, including Egypt and Turkey, will be in attendance. Several of the U.S.’s typical allies, such as Canada, have not yet signed onto the organization.

Blurb:

The Vatican will not join President Donald Trump’s newly formed Board of Peace, its top diplomatic official said Tuesday, signaling reluctance from the Holy See to take part in the post-war initiative.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Holy See “will not participate in the Board of Peace because of its particular nature, which is evidently not that of other States,” the Vatican’s official news outlet reported.

Blurb:

The Vatican has rejected an invitation to participate in President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which was recently formed to rebuild war-ravaged Gaza.

The Holy See’s top diplomatic official confirmed the rejection on Tuesday.

The refusal to join the international effort signals hesitation from the Catholic Church’s leadership toward the post-war initiative.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said the Holy See “will not participate in the Board of Peace because of its particular nature, which is evidently not that of other States,” according to the Vatican’s official news outlet.

Blurb:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that members of his newly created Board of Peace have pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding war-ravaged Gaza and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory.

The pledges will be formally announced when board members gather in Washington on Thursday for their first meeting, he said.

“The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History, and it is my honor to serve as its Chairman,” Trump said in a social media posting announcing the pledges.

Blurb:

 

For the past twenty years, For more than twenty years, my colleagues and I have argued for what the world actually needs, not a malevolent,failed United Nations, but a union of headed by the US wth shared values and moral clarity.

From its inception, the United Nations was structurally destined to fail. It has failed the tortured, the oppressed, and the poor on a scale that is impossible to quantify. Graft and corruption are not anomalies at the UN; they are endemic to the institution itself. As Norm Coleman once put it, the UN functions as a “jobs program for many countries,” where nations that contribute little or nothing wield outsized influence over global affairs.

The bureaucracy alone is damning: thousands of mandates and precious little to show for them.

A United Nations initiate designed to give administrative flesh to President Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan is feared to become its replacement. What started as a board of invested actors to help manage the transition in Gaza from Hamas to something else is now taking on a global scope as mission creep has taken hold at an ecumenical scale. Trump said of the board that it would “get a lot of work done that the UN should have done.”

Maya Ungar, a UN analyst, is sounding the alarm, claiming, “If member states, if countries do decide to sign up – and not just to sign up, but to really institutionalise and move along with this Board of Peace process – it is going to become a parallel or competing structure to the UN Security Council, which is an institution that has already been facing immense legitimacy as well as financial concerns over the past few years.”

Blurb:

The Board of Peace was initially given a limited mandate by the UN Security Council last November, endorsed strictly as a mechanism to support the peace process in Gaza.

But recent developments suggest the project is rapidly expanding beyond that scope. Its draft charter reportedly makes no mention of Gaza at all.

Instead, the body is described as an organisation designed to “secure peace” in regions threatened by conflict – a remit strikingly similar to that of the UN Security Council.

Maya Ungar, a UN analyst at the Intern

Blurb:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to join US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.

A statement from his office said Netanyahu would become a member of the board “which is to be comprised of world leaders”.

The board was originally thought to be aimed at helping end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and oversee reconstruction. But its proposed charter does not mention the Palestinian territory and appears to be designed to supplant functions of the UN.

Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have also agreed to join, as have Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Turkey and Vietnam.

Blurb:

The United Nations adopted the United States’s proposal on Monday to begin implementing the next phase of President Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.

Trump’s 20-point plan to achieve lasting stability in the region, which had been beset by hostilities between Hamas and Israel, gained international legitimacy after the 15-member council voted 13-0 in favor of a resolution endorsing the plan’s proposal for a temporary new government in Gaza.

Russia and China abstained from the vote, which supported the establishment of the “Board of Peace,” chaired by Trump as a transitional government, and the creation of a temporary “International Stabilization Force” in Gaza.

Blurb:

“He wants to be part of the Abraham Accords,” Trump said.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) signaled renewed willingness to join the Abraham Accords during a meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday. He emphasized that any normalization with Israel must include a “path to a two-state solution” between Gaza and Israel.

The meeting, MBS’s first White House visit in more than seven years, was marked by an elaborate welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn to spotlight the administration’s partnership with the kingdom and showcase the rapport between the two leaders. They discussed security cooperation, defense sales, nuclear agreements, and hundreds of billions of dollars in Saudi investment in the US economy.

Blurb:

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, warned Israel on Wednesday against annexing the West Bank, saying steps taken by parliament and settler violence threatened a Gaza deal.

Israeli lawmakers voted on Wednesday to advance two bills on annexing the occupied West Bank, barely a week after President Donald Trump pushed through a deal aimed at ending a two-year Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip that was retaliation for a Hamas attack.

“I think the president’s made clear that’s not something we can be supportive of right now,” Rubio said of annexation as he boarded his plane for a visit to Israel. Annexation moves are “threatening for the peace deal,” he told reporters.

Blurb:

Vice President JD Vance expressed alarm on Thursday about the Israeli legislature’s vote that would claim sovereignty over swaths of the West Bank, calling the move an “insult” to the Trump administration because it could threaten peace in the region.

Before departing for the United States at the end of his two-day trip to the Jewish state, Vance denounced the Knesset’s vote as a “very stupid political stunt.”

“I personally take some insult to it,” he said at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. “The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel.”

Blurb:

The U.S. increased pressure on Hamas on Tuesday to disarm in the next phase of an already fragile Gaza ceasefire as President Donald Trump pushed to cement an end to the devastating conflict.

In a visit to Israel, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said the ceasefire plan was going better than expected but warned the Palestinian militant group it would be obliterated if it did not cooperate, echoing a Trump threat earlier in the day of “fast, furious and brutal force”.

Blurb:

The United Nations’ top legal body, the International Court of Justice, on Wednesday gave an advisory opinion saying that Israel is under the obligation to ensure the basic needs of the civilian population in Gaza are met. The panel of 11 judges added Israel is forced to support relief efforts provided by the United Nations in the Gaza Strip and its entities, including UNRWA, the United NationsRelief and WorksAgency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

“As an occupying power, Israel is obliged to ensure the basic needs of the local population, including the supplies essential for their survival,” presiding judge Yuji Iwasawa said.

Blurb:

Vice-President JD Vance arrived in Israel as the ceasefire in Gaza entered its eleventh day. He is expected to shore up President Donald Trump’s peace agreement amid sabotage attempts by Hamas.

“Vance was meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other officials and is expected to stay in the region until Thursday,” the Associated Press reported. “White House envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, arrived Monday and Vance met with them upon landing.”

Blurb:

Special envoy Steve Witkoff and the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner have arrived in Israel on Monday to shore up the shaky Israel-Hamas ceasefire, a day after the fragile deal faced its first flareup with Israel threatening to halt aid transfers after it said Hamas militants had killed two of its soldiers.

The Israeli military later said it continued enforcing the ceasefire and an official confirmed that aid deliveries would resume on Monday.

By early afternoon, it was not immediately clear if the flow of aid had restarted.

More than a week has passed since the start of the US-proposed truce aimed at ending two years of devastating Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Blurb:

The fragile truce in Gaza faced its first major test on Sunday after Israel alleged Hamas had violated the ceasefire and hit back with air and artillery strikes.

An Israeli security official told The Associated Press, on the condition of anonymity pending a formal announcement, that the transfer of aid into Gaza is halted “until further notice.”

Earlier Sunday, Israel’s military said it hit multiple targets in the Gaza Strip using aircraft and artillery, after it accused Hamas of shooting at Israeli soldiers. Military officials later said two soldiers were killed.

An Israeli military official told CBS News that Hamas had targeted its soldiers with a rocket-propelled grenade and sniper fire.

Blurb:

Israel restricted aid into Gaza and kept the enclave’s border shut on Tuesday while re-emergent Hamas fighters demonstrated their grip by executing men in the street, darkening the outlook for U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war.

Israel told the United Nations it will only allow 300 aid trucks into Gaza – half the agreed daily number – from Wednesday, and that no fuel or gas will be allowed in, except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure, according to a note seen by Reuters and confirmed by the United Nations.

Blurb:

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, asks for more detail of what the UK is doing to help ensure more aid gets into Gaza.

He says all the bodies of dead hostages need to be returned.

And he asks what the UK is doing to ensure that the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on the West Bank stops.

Starmer thanks Davey for the “content and tone” of his response. (He is making a contrast with Badenoch’s.)

On aid, he says there is a need for more trucks be admitted to Gaza.

On the bodies of hostages, Starmer says he agrees with Davey.

He says, when the media are finally admitted to Gaza, he thinks there will be ‘“quite some debate” in the Commons about “the full horror” of what happened.