Why Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is destined to crash and burn
Mother and daughter inside their tent in a makeshift camp for displaced Palestinians in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, 27 December 2025
Robert Inlakesh writes in The Palestine Chronicle 21 January 2026:
The recent announcement of US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” (BoP) has stirred intense debate over what Phase 2 of the Gaza Ceasefire will look like. In reality, figuring this out is rather simple: it is a mission destined to crash and burn, similar to how the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and the Floating Aid Pier did.
Proponents of the Trump administration’s BoP have little to show other than fancy rhetoric, churned out unironically, due to their lack of any basic understanding of Gaza’s predicament.
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However, the individual granted the most consequential role, the High Representative for Gaza, is none other than Nickolay Mladenov. While serving as a United Nations envoy to the Middle East, he developed a relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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In addition, Mladenov left his UN post to become director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi. He not only resides in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) but also serves as a Segal Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP).
His affiliation with WINEP should raise major red flags. The institute is often referred to as the think-tank wing of the Israel Lobby in Washington and, according to the Quincy Institute’s ‘Think Tank Funding Tracker,’ is funded by dark money. Mladenov is also a passionate supporter of the Trump administration’s so-called “Abraham Accords,” an initiative aimed at pushing Arab states to abandon the demand for a Palestinian state before normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.