The Board of Peace and the economics of occupation

Donald Trump speaks of Gaza in the past tense. The violence continues. Ceasefires are announced and ignored. On the same day reconstruction plans circulate, four Palestinians were killed in Gaza, according to Al Jazeera. Violence persists on the ground whilst development schemes multiply above it.

Trump frames Gaza as a development opportunity. “Once this board is completely formed,” he says, “we can do pretty much whatever we want to do, and we’ll do it in conjunction with the United Nations.” Whatever we want to do. Power grants itself permission to act. Palestinians are denied input. Justice is not sought out or made relevant. The same UN that reported Israel has committed genocide in Gaza still welcomes initiatives from the same colonial powers to “reconstruct Gaza”.

The colonial capitalist playbook

The language of the Board of Peace belongs to a tested repertoire. The League of Nations Mandate system promised to “prepare” populations for self-governance whilst extracting resources. The Oslo Accords formalised occupation through administrative zones and economic protocols. Iraq’s post-2003 reconstruction opened the country to private contractors whilst Iraqis were excluded from decisions about their own infrastructure. In each case, development and aid provided international legitimacy for foreign control.

The mechanisms are specific. Special economic zones offer tax incentives to foreign investors whilst local labour is cheapened and controlled. Public-private partnerships lock territories into decades of debt servicing to international financial institutions. Humanitarian corridors are managed by private contractors who profited from the destruction. Development loans come with conditionalities that restrict economic sovereignty. This model transformed countries from Zambia to Jamaica into debt colonies in the 1980s and 1990s, where social spending was gutted and state assets were privatised. Post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan funneled billions through international contractors whilst Afghan control remained minimal.

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Gaza’s offshore gas reserves make the stakes explicit. The Gaza Marine field, discovered in 2000, holds an estimated one trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Palestinians have been denied the ability to extract or profit from these resources for over two decades. Israel has maintained control over Gaza’s maritime space and blocked development, citing security concerns. Now reconstruction plans circulate whilst the question of who will control these reserves remains unaddressed. A territory with significant gas reserves, its population displaced and its governance structures dismantled—can you see what will happen next?

Reports indicate that firms with ties to the US and Gulf states are already positioning themselves for contracts. The same actors who armed or funded the bombardment will profit from clearing the rubble. Palestinians are reduced to a population to be handled, rebuilt, relocated, stabilised. They are never consulted. They are never recognised as sovereign.

The system functions as designed

Legal analysis, including assessments by Palestinian legal scholars, confirms the plan was formulated without Palestinian participation. The plan violates the Palestinian right to self-determination. Its legal basis remains deliberately ambiguous—the authority could derive from Palestinian consent or from coercive UN Security Council powers under Chapter VII, which grants the Security Council authority to determine threats to peace and authorise military and non-military actions to restore international security. The refusal to clarify is tactical. Ambiguity enables domination without accountability.

The UN’s complicity operates through structure, not failure. The Security Council grants the United States veto power, which it has used at least 49 times to shield Israel from accountability on Palestine-related resolutions. International law becomes enforceable or irrelevant depending on who violates it. The International Court of Justice issues rulings on genocide that are ignored by the same body tasked with maintaining international peace and security. This is how the system was designed to work.

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The plan also consolidates broader regional dynamics intensified since the Abraham Accords. The 2020 normalisation agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan were premised on economic integration, shared security frameworks driven by concerns about Iran and defence cooperation. These agreements sidelined Palestinians and deferred any reckoning with their demands for self-determination. Gaza’s reconstruction extends this logic, positioning the territory as a site for regional investment and control. Egypt maintains the blockade. Gulf states provide financial leverage. Israel supplies the security apparatus. Together, they create conditions where reconstruction proceeds under permanent external authority, with Palestinian political aspirations rendered irrelevant.

What Palestinians demand

Palestinian voices are systematically excluded from international discourse, yet their demands are clear. Civil society organisations in Gaza and the West Bank articulate: an end to occupation, the right of return for refugees, sovereignty over resources, self-determination without external administration. These demands are grounded in international law but dismissed as unrealistic because they threaten the interests the Board of Peace is designed to protect.

The war continues. The killing persists. Gaza is spoken about as a site to be managed because its people are expected to endure silently, to survive just enough to be governed. Speaking of Gaza as a past tragedy whilst Palestinians die is strategic. Power moves on whilst violence continues. Plans are drawn whilst bodies are buried.

Capitalism and colonialism converge when land is cleared by bombs and policy. Sovereignty is replaced with development. Genocide is followed by investment opportunities. Gaza becomes a project, a market, a zone. It is stripped of recognition as a living political community with the right to determine its own future.

Peace in this framework means stability for investors, order for occupiers, silence from the colonised. Calling this a Board of Peace insults the dead and threatens the living. Power dominates and insists on calling domination peace.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.