Kushner-Witkoff: Gaza and the New World Order

READ: My latest piece on Trump, Netanyahu and Iran in the New Arab: Netanyahu’s cynical embrace of Iran’s protesters

Trump and his Middle East fixers, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, have triumphantly announced that Gaza is transitioning from Phase One of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage exchange, to Phase Two.

But there are a few problems with the planned transition:

…The Trump administration seeks to proceed with the next phase of a ceasefire deal despite allies’ scepticism and a lack so far of international support and funding.

Kushner has failed to get the Gulf petro-states to pony up the $70-100 billion necessary to rebuild Gaza. So where will he go to get it?

US officials aim to use the Davos economic forum this month to rally financial and political support for their Gaza plans, said one of the people.

Asking global billionaires and the economic elites to solve a crisis Israel created, but wants nothing to do with fixing, sounds like a recipe for failure.  Who would want to rebuild Gaza when they know Israel will destroy it again in the next war?

As they prepare for the roll-out, the principals met for consultations. Who was included and where did they meet?

[Gaza “high representative”] Mladenov  travelled to Israel…for meetings with senior US and Israeli officials including Benjamin Netanyahu. At the prime minister’s office…were many of those now responsible for Gaza’s postwar transition…

…On the “American” side of the table were Aryeh Lightstone, a senior US envoy who leads the Gaza team based in Israel, and Liran Tancman, an Israeli tech entrepreneur and former reservist advising the US team on a volunteer basis.

Opposite them on the “Israeli” side were Michael Eisenberg, an Israeli-American venture capitalist advising Netanyahu on Gaza and US policy, and General Roman Gofman…who has been nominated to head the Mossad foreign spy agency…

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation raised from the dead

Many of them were key players in forming the disastrous Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. That little show resulted in imperceptible amounts of aid reaching Gazans, while 2,600 were killed by the IDF and Palestinian militias it funded and armed, in the scramble to get what little aid there was.  These are the players who will “solve” the Gaza crisis and finally bring peace.

They are also the authors of a bizarre plan to reconstruct Gaza as a tech hub and Mediterranean resort destination. They called it Project Sunrise (my critique here). It would:

…Convert the bombed-out enclave into a gleaming metropolis…[Its] PowerPoint slides [are] replete with images of coastal high-rises alongside charts and cost tables, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity..

[It will become] A futuristic city with high-speed trains, modern architecture, and a port. A digitally-driven smart city…

Reading this fantasy tells you all you need to know about the likelihood of the Phase Two plan working.

Note what is missing: Palestinians and representatives of Arab states expected to play a key role in selling the plan.  Without them, this entire project is a cruel charade.

The amount of wishful thinking involved in this Phase Two plan is substantial:

They aim to follow the…announcements with “quick wins” enabled by Israel…including the full reopening of the Rafah crossing to Egypt; more medical support for Palestinians; and the loosening of import restrictions going to Gaza.

When has Israel offered the Gaza anything, let alone wins or even “quick wins?” It has closed all the crossings both from Israel and Egypt since 10/7, with a few short hiatuses.  It even expelled three-dozen NGOs providing the vast majority of humanitarian support to Gazans.  Let’s be real. Phase Two will be an utter failure without them.  They are the only bodies capable to organizing and delivering the vast amounts of food and medicine to millions of Gazans desperate to receive it.  The notion that GHF will replace them is a cruel hoax, especially considering its bloody track record.

As for “medical support,” Gaza needs far more than that. It needs infrastructure: hospitals, doctors, equipment and medicine on a massive scale.  Will Israel provide any such support by rebuilding hospitals it destroyed?  Of course not.  “Loosening import restrictions” is not the free and full flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is what Phase Two specified. Anything less is Phase Two minus, and unacceptable.  How will you achieve agreement to this overall plan, when Israel refuses to honor its provisions?

There are yet more roadblocks in the path:

Western and Muslim states remain reluctant to provide peacekeeping troops or funds for Gaza, as Israeli forces still occupy half the enclave and Hamas tightens its grip on the other half. Only $1bn has been raised, said the regional diplomat, when an estimated tens of billions are needed.

These are all serious, almost certainly insurmountable obstacles to implementation.

Phase Two: depends who you talk to

Israel’s version of Phase Two terms includes disarming and expulsion of Hamas. Though the original 20-point deal called for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, it has shown no readiness to withdraw. There is no reason to believe it will.  Handover of governance to a panel of Palestinian “technocrats” (see screenshot) untainted by anything but a rapacious appetite for grift and willingness to collaborate with the US and Israel.

Though Trump’s peace plan explicitly noted it would include only technocrats with no political affiliation, the leader of the committee will be a former PA minister. This indicates that the PA will play a major role in Gaza governance.  This will be yet another nail in the coffin as far as Hamas is concerned.  It will not disband only to be replaced by its arch enemy, the PA.

For Hamas, Phase Two calls for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and full reopening of all crossings from both Israel and Egypt.  Yet hasn’t been a word about Israeli withdrawal. Clearly, it has also rejected fully reopening the crossings.  These are again violations of the Trump agreement.  Violations to which Witkoff and Kushner appear to have acquiesced.

Besides Palestinians, who else is missing? Trump’s envoys failed to get buy-in from any of the critical Arab players: neither Hamas, Saudi Arabia nor the UAE have agreed to participate.  Egypt is supposedly on board, but has made no commitments. As a result, there is no security force to maintain civil order once Hamas is no longer in charge . Nor have the two “Wise Men,” Witkoff and Kushner, worked out a mechanism to ensure Hamas disarms and gives way to an  administrative committee.

So what have they achieved? They’ve built a neat little Potemkin village with councils (of Americans and Israelis) holding meetings to determine how to run Gaza, without consulting any of those who they.propose to govern.

Another nail in the coffin is the participation of the detested Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in planning and implementation of Phase 2. The Brain Trust behind the GF failed project consists of self-appointed Israeli “volunteers” who’ve conceived their own vision of what Gaza will be.  There couldn’t be a clearer recipe for abject failure than all this.

Killing the UN, Trump’s New World Order

On a much broader level, Trump has devised an even more chilling scheme. This one would replace the UN–a body detested as a New World Order by MAGA, Israel, right-wing autocrats, and crackpot conspiracy theorists–with an expanded Board of Peace:

…The Trump administration view[s] the Board of Peace “as a potential substitute for the UN . . . a kind of parallel unofficial body to deal with other conflicts beyond Gaza”.

You will have a failed Gaza peace plan overseen by a Board of Peace, whose mandate will be expanded to solve all manner of global crises, including Ukraine and Venezuela.  What could go wrong?

Trump has announced the Board’s members it’s bizarre that some of these figures would agree to oversee the plan that Kushner and Witkoff has cooked up:

🚨 The White House announced on Friday the composition of the Executive Board for the Gaza Board of Peace – the international body that will oversee the activities of the new Palestinian technocratic government in the enclave, as well as the process of Gaza’s reconstruction and…

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) January 16, 2026

Trump has even drafted a charter for this monstrosity.  The Board of Peace will have a country club-like fee structure.  Just as Mar a Lago members pay hundreds of thousands to belong, the BoP members will pay $1-billion to play.  It’s a billionaire’s version of pay-to-play.  You pony up if you want to play in Trump’s sand box.  It’s hard to believe that any country would take this seriously. But given it’s Trump, they appear to be lining up to join.

The history of international peace-making bodies goes back to the League of Nations following WWI.  After WWII, UN was founded as the successor to the League. It has played a critical role in maintaining peace and resolving conflict over the past 75 years. Now in a few months, these brainiacs propose to replace it with a slap-dash entity they’re calling the Board of Peace.

They would dismantle the international rules-based order–already dealt a death blow by Israel’s Gaza genocide–and impose a US-dominated body with select invited member states determined by it. They would resolve global conflicts using a mix of jawboning, Trumpian guile, and US military might. This is Trump reinventing the global order in his image.  A sweeping, disastrous vision which threatens to throw the entire world into chaos.