Trump’s ‘Board of Peace – aggrandizing theater and the impunity of genocide
The ‘Board of Peace’ inaugural meeting in Washington on 19 February 2026
Jamal Kanj writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 24 February 2026:
More than 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered in Gaza, with tens of thousands more still missing beneath the rubble. They did not die to “build a home,” or privatize their beaches. They had homes and free beaches. Gaza was a living city—albeit under decades of Israeli siege—before it was leveled by the most advanced global terror machine on earth, armed, financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive US administrations.
This reality was nowhere to be found at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington. Sold as a diplomatic initiative, the gathering functioned instead as a spectacle condoning Israeli war crimes, disciplining resistance, and rebranding occupation as peace. The symbolism was everywhere. Donald Trump opened the meeting by recognizing FIFA president Gianni Infantino, as if the gathering were a global sports gala, before he introduced the world’s political leaders. The staging spoke louder than words. The meeting was a performance, where hierarchy trumps humanity and optics replaces accountability.
Trump used the moment as expected. He generously lavished praise on himself and recycled the same familiar hogwash by condemning Palestinian resistance while remaining silent on Israel’s systematic violations of the ceasefire. In perhaps one of the worst, most troubling moments of his speech, Trump claimed that the war in Gaza was over, but for “little flames.”
The “little flames” were the lives of more than 600 Palestinians murdered by Israel since the start of his ceasefire. Six hundred human beings were extinguished while Trump spoke in metaphors. Peace does not exist where murdering Palestinians is excused, and occupation is normalized.
There was no recognition of genocide or Israeli atrocities. To the contrary, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff thanked Benjamin Netanyahu, an internationally indicted war criminal, and spoke exclusively of Israeli captives. There was no mention of the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians, the 10,000 Palestinian hostages in Israeli jails, no acknowledgment of mass graves, starving families, or children pulled lifeless from the rubble. The Israeli predicament was individualized, humanized, and elevated. Palestinian suffering was erased entirely.
The people of Gaza and the rest of Palestine do not suffer from a lack of homes. They suffer—and continue to suffer—from the complete denial of their historic rights. What Gaza needs is not reconstruction of beachfront real-estate fantasies, but a political solution that recognizes Palestinians as human beings entitled to freedom, dignity, and a state of their own. Gaza is neither a development site nor a charitable project. Treating Gaza as a humanitarian problem to be managed, not a people to be liberated, is precisely how occupation is preserved and why resistance becomes inevitable.