President Trump will personally chair the first formal meeting of the Board of Peace on February 19, where he plans to unveil a sweeping multi-billion-dollar reconstruction blueprint for Gaza and detail the deployment of a UN-authorized international stabilization force to the territory.
According to the Daily Mail, delegations from no fewer than 20 nations are expected to attend. Several heads of state will be in the room. Trump is also set to announce the total amount raised so far for the reconstruction fund — a figure that administration insiders say has been building quietly for weeks.
The stabilization force, described as comprising several thousand troops drawn from multiple countries, would deploy to Gaza under UN authorization. No American troops are expected to be part of the contingent. Under the plan, Hamas members who pledge neutrality and peaceful coexistence will be offered immunity, while those who wish to leave the Gaza Strip entirely will be given a pathway out of the country.
The Board of Peace has moved fast. Trump signed its establishing documents on January 23 at the 56th annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, following a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the board's creation. Less than a month later, the inaugural session is set, with real money on the table and real troop commitments taking shape.
At the Davos signing ceremony, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff stood alongside Jared Kushner and Nickolay Mladenov as the charter was formally announced. Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, delivered a speech and presented a vision for what's been called "New Gaza" — a coastal redevelopment plan featuring high-rises and resort infrastructure. He indicated that work on rebuilding has already begun.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he would join the board during his visit to Washington.
The pace here is the point. This isn't a study group or a blue-ribbon panel designed to produce a report nobody reads. The Board of Peace has a UN mandate, committed nations, a reconstruction fund with real capital behind it, and a timeline measured in months—not years or decades.
Not everyone is rushing to the table. UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has said Britain will not yet sign up to the Board of Peace, citing concerns about the potential involvement of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It's a revealing choice. The UK's stated objection isn't about the plan's substance, its feasibility, or its potential to stabilize one of the most volatile stretches of land on Earth. It's about who else might be in the room. That's not foreign policy — it's social anxiety dressed up as principle.
Western allies reportedly watching from the sidelines while Trump assembles a 20-nation coalition is becoming a pattern. The same governments that spent years calling for peace in the Middle East now find reasons to hesitate when someone actually builds the architecture for it. The concern is never "will this work?" It's always "what will it look like if we participate?"
Meanwhile, Indonesia — the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation — is among the nations engaged. The coalition Trump is assembling doesn't need European hand-wringing to function. It just needs countries willing to show up.
The immediate mission is Gaza. But the scope of what's being built here extends well beyond a single territory. Speculation has intensified that the Board of Peace could eventually move to address other protracted global conflicts — effectively creating a parallel structure to the kind of multilateral diplomacy the United Nations has failed to deliver for decades.
That prospect will terrify the foreign policy establishment. The UN has become a place where conflicts go to be managed, not resolved. Resolutions pass, peacekeepers deploy, and the underlying wars grind on for generations. If the Board of Peace demonstrates that a motivated coalition with American leadership can actually move the needle — raise real money, deploy real forces, rebuild real infrastructure — the argument for the existing order gets significantly harder to make.
The details still matter. The immunity framework for Hamas members who renounce violence raises obvious questions about enforcement, legal authority, and verification. The exit pathway for departing fighters requires destination countries willing to accept them. The stabilization force needs clear rules of engagement and a defined mandate. None of this is simple.
But the difference between this effort and the last several decades of Middle East diplomacy is that someone is actually building something — not convening another summit to discuss the possibility of future discussions.
Trump will sit at the head of the table with representatives of 20 nations. He'll announce what's been raised, detail what's being deployed, and lay out the reconstruction timeline for a territory that has been synonymous with intractable conflict for longer than most voters have been alive.
The Western allies who stay home will get to explain why they chose to watch.