On 17 November 2025, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2803, handing control of Gaza to the Board of Peace. The Board is not affiliated with any one state, and Donald Trump holds full power over it as chairman. Its mandate runs until 31 December 2027 and must be renewed for the Board to keep operating in Gaza after that date. The Board was meant to settle who governs Gaza during this transitional period, but its failure is inevitable. It lacks real power, its success depends on Israel’s cooperation, and its internal structure undermines Palestinian sovereignty. It is also yet another failure by international institutions to uphold international law.
Internal Systematic Failure
The Board of Peace has no Palestinian representation at its decision-making level, which crippled it as an effective administration from the start. The only Palestinians involved sit on the technocratic committee beneath it, which carries out the Board’s decisions rather than shaping them. Palestinian needs are not democratically represented, only assumed by non-Palestinian members, which makes the Board less a transitional government than a new foreign occupier. The Board has also refused to work with UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees). That cuts it off from one of the few organisations that has kept operating in Gaza since the events of 2023. For an international community that claims to be committed to democratic self-determination, this is hypocritical. Swapping one occupying force, Israel, for another, the Board, leaves the Palestinians where they were: occupied, with no control over their own country. History offers a warning. Externally imposed transitional bodies with no local participation, as in Iraq, have provoked resistance and instability. Neither the Board of Peace nor any other peace process will succeed unless the Palestinians are at the table as equals.
Israel’s Reluctance
Even with Palestinian representation, the Board would lack the power to move the peace process forward on its own. Hamas can only be disarmed, and Israel can only withdraw, if the Board’s administration can enter Gaza, take control and oversee both steps. Hamas has agreed to disarm on condition that Israel withdraws, but Israel is refusing to withdraw. The Palestinian technocratic committee that is meant to run Gaza under the Board’s supervision remains in Cairo, because Israel denies it entry, so the peace plan has stalled. Palestinian police recruits who were due to leave the Strip for training have also been barred from exiting, even though they had been vetted by Israel. Once again, the peace process runs into the same reality. Israel has nothing to gain from a sovereign Palestinian state, and although it initially agreed to diplomatic solutions, it has set conditions that cannot be met. The Board is an independent body with no means of compelling cooperation. It cannot carry a transition that depends on an actor with no incentive to cooperate and no historical record of doing so. That dependency is itself the product of a deeper institutional failure.
International Failure
One of the central aims of international law is to secure the right of self-determination and protect it against invasion or ethnic cleansing. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power has binding obligations to protect civilians and meet their basic needs. These obligations have applied to Israel’s conduct in Gaza since 1967. Resolution 2803 hands administration of Gaza to a transitional body that no state is directly accountable for. In doing so, it risks replacing those enforceable obligations with a voluntary arrangement that depends on the goodwill of the Board’s members.
Although 142 countries voted for a two-state solution at the UN General Assembly, the Security Council then put that outcome directly at risk. The Gaza Peace Plan speaks of ‘a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood’ but never mentions the two-state solution. That leaves Palestinian sovereignty to the Board members’ interpretation. Among those members, Chairman Trump holds absolute power. He has full control over the Executive Board, the ISF commander and the agenda, and he chooses his own successor. His chairmanship outlasts his presidency and ends only if he resigns or the Board votes unanimously. In effect, the UN has handed power to a man who has openly described his real-estate vision for Gaza. France and Britain voted for the resolution but have since refused to join the Board, citing the threat it poses to the UN Charter. Within the two months between Resolution 2803 and the Board’s inauguration, two permanent members of the Security Council that had backed it declined to take part, a tacit recognition that the Board is an unethical and untrustworthy organisation.
That recognition came too late, and it exposes the Board as a systemic failure of the United Nations. The UN’s authorisation of the Board must be renewed by 31 December 2027, but nothing in the Board’s own charter compels it to hand Gaza over. Any handover depends instead on whether reform of the Palestinian Authority has been ‘satisfactorily completed’, and the Board alone makes that judgement. Even if the UN demanded its withdrawal, the Board could carry on without a recognised legal mandate. Any attempt by the Security Council to dissolve it would also be likely to meet a US veto. The mechanism designed as an exit therefore depends on US consent. This is a dangerous, irreversible departure from the UN Charter, and the sign of an international order in urgent need of reform.
For all its novelty, the Board of Peace leaves the Palestinians as subordinate actors in their own governance and leaves Israel’s hegemony unchallenged. It has also quietly discarded the two-state solution. By allowing this, international institutions have abdicated their responsibility and revealed their own inadequacy.
