Bernard Spiegal

On the 17^th November 2025, the UN Security Council (UNSC) voted on Resolution 2803 to endorse President Trump’s Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. Thirteen states voted in favour, the UK among them, with no votes against. China and Russia abstained. That same resolution included the establishment of a Trump dominated Board of Peace (BoP), an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), and the organisational structure beneath the BoP.

President Donald J Trump, as Chairman of the BoP, awarded himself exclusive veto powers over all decisions the BoD and its subsidiary bodies might take.

UN relinquishes its authority

In voting for the resolution, the UN relinquished both its authority and power to affect what is at once a major conflict and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe. Trump has effectively usurped the role of the so-called international community via the UN. The BoP is a thing of itself, floating free of institutional bonds that could hold it to account.

Thus far (as at 29 January), the list of BoP founding members include Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, El Salvador, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, spanning the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Caucasus. These states represent diversities of motives and interests. It must be questionable the degree to which they will be able to reach, still less hold fast to, consensus positions should any emerge as the wished-for peace process unfolds.

Curiously, the UK has thus far declined to join the BoP notwithstanding voting in favour of its establishment.  European countries – France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Slovenia – have explicitly declined to join the BoP.

Fundamentally flawed

The BoP is fundamentally flawed.

Quite remarkably, Israel is a member of the BoP thus ensuring that it is on the inside of the decision-making process as it affects Gaza and the indigenous Palestinians.

The BoP replicates the power relationship that obtains between the Israeli Jewish supremacist state and Palestinians: that is, Israel’s domination of Palestinian lives. The structure and effect of the entire BoP architecture is to restrict Palestinians to being decision-receivers, not autonomous agents able freely to determine their own interests.

Wider context

Israel will work to sabotage any attempt to grant Palestinians even the most minimal amount of self-determination since this would undermine its commitment to creating a Greater Israel. It can therefore be predicted that Israel will continue to attack Gaza on the pretext that Hamas is refusing to relinquish its weapons. This suits Israel very well, since it provides a notional justification for Israel’s continued bellicosity, enabling it to cull the indigenous Palestinian population by death and displacement.  Above all, it paralyses any progress towards formation of a Palestinian state [1]. Its ramped-up ethnic cleansing activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem serve the same purpose.

In the face of all this our unutterably shameless UK government, by its continuing acts of calculated omission – not acting where it could – are as direct perpetrators in genocide.

[1] Note that a Palestinian state, often referred to as part of a Two State Solution, is itself an unjust construct, notwithstanding its seeming widespread support.