Trump’s Board of Peace: Twenty-Five Nations, Zero Palestinian Voices

The arithmetic of representation at Trump’s Board of Peace is stark: more than two dozen founding member nations, zero Palestinian voices. The people whose homeland is the subject of the board’s deliberations — whose governance, security, reconstruction, and political future are being determined — were not invited to participate.
This exclusion is not incidental — it reflects a deliberate choice by the Trump administration about how to structure the board. The rationale appears to be that Palestinian representation would complicate the board’s functioning, given the divisions between the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and other factions. But the consequence is a board making decisions about Palestinians without Palestinians.
The consequences of this exclusion will be practical, not merely symbolic. Any governance arrangement that Palestinians do not consider legitimate will face resistance. Any reconstruction plan that Palestinians did not help design may not reflect their actual priorities. Any security framework imposed without Palestinian input may lack the community cooperation needed to function.
Arab and Muslim members of the board are aware of this problem and are attempting to serve as proxies for Palestinian interests. But proxy representation is not the same as direct participation. Arab governments have their own relationships with Palestinian factions, their own political interests in the outcome, and their own constraints on how far they will press Israeli or American positions.
The Palestinian exclusion is a structural flaw in the board that will become more apparent as it attempts to make binding decisions. The board’s first meeting Thursday was the beginning of a process that will ultimately need to find ways to incorporate Palestinian agency — or face the risk of imposing a settlement that Palestinians reject.