The money was announced in New York
It happened in New York. A sum of $2.45 billion. This money, pledged by a new organisation called the 'Board of Peace', is intended to begin the total reconstruction of Gaza after years of recurring conflict. The declaration was made on 23 September, during a meeting staged on the periphery of the United Nations General Assembly, an event designed to project stability and attract international consensus. It was a sterile affair.
Gaza is not stable. The ceasefire is not holding. On the same day that billions were pledged, the Israeli military killed seven Palestinians inside the territory, a sharp rebuttal to any international calls for calm. This is the core problem. The violence continues. Violations against the population are a daily occurrence, a brutal rhythm of life and death that persists even as world leaders appeal for adherence to the fragile peace deal.
Its name is the 'Board of Peace'. Its stated aim is reconstruction. Yet peace is a precondition for rebuilding anything, and the necessary foundations of non violence are entirely absent from the Gaza Strip today. One cannot rebuild a house while it is still under bombardment, and one cannot lay the groundwork for a new society when the ground itself is continually shaken by explosions and grief. The plan is detailed. It is ambitious. But it is also abstract. The pledge of $2.45 billion, a figure so large it almost loses meaning, feels disconnected from the immediate, visceral needs of a population trapped by a blockade and subjected to ongoing military action.
There is a plan. And there is money. The question is whether any of it can be spent while the killing goes on, or whether the promise of funds for reconstruction, sanitation, and infrastructure can itself act as a lever to stop the violence. For now, the contrast is absolute. In a New York meeting room, the talk was of cement mixers and blueprints for a brighter future, while in Gaza, the immediate reality was of seven more funerals. The gap seems impossible to bridge.
The group behind the pledge
The Board of Peace is a Trump project. It carries his name. It is the newest vehicle for the former American president’s very particular brand of Middle East diplomacy, a philosophy that has long favoured grand economic gestures over the difficult work of political negotiation. This is not new. It is a continuation. The board’s logic is a direct descendant of the policy that defined his term in office, an approach which assumed that regional stability could be bought, and that the intractable Israeli Palestinian conflict could be sidelined by a new architecture of commerce and shared security interests.
The result was the Abraham Accords. Signed in 2020, the accords established formal diplomatic and economic relations between Israel and four Arab nations, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. The deals were a shock. They deliberately bypassed the long held consensus that normalisation with Israel should only follow the creation of a Palestinian state. Instead, the Accords posited that prosperity and cooperation between Israel and its neighbours could create the conditions for peace. The Palestinian leadership was circumvented. They were made spectators to a process that decided their future without their consent, a strategy this new board appears set to replicate with its focus on Gaza alone.
Now comes the money. Lots of it. The board has announced a figure of $2.45 billion for reconstruction. The sum is precise. It is enormous. But the source of this funding remains a complete mystery, a crucial detail missing from the New York announcement. The source is unknown. There is no public list of donors, no roster of states or private entities that have committed to underwriting this colossal expense. This secrecy is not an accident. It is a political choice.
Any answer is speculation. The context however points towards the very same Gulf states that signed the Abraham Accords. Their involvement would fit the established pattern of seeking economic solutions while avoiding direct political engagement on the Palestinian issue. Committing billions to a reconstruction fund for Gaza allows them to demonstrate support for the Palestinian people. It does this without conferring any legitimacy on the existing Palestinian political authorities or challenging Israel's strategic position. The money is a tool. For now, its origins remain in the shadows, a powerful but undeclared force in this new geopolitical game. The pledge is public. The backers are not.
A place of recurring disaster
The money is promised for a place of recurring disaster. Gaza is not simply poor. It is a territory deliberately de-developed over decades, a process accelerated by the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since 2007, after Hamas took control. The blockade is near total. It controls what and who goes in or out, strangling an economy that cannot function without access to external markets or the free movement of its people. This isolation has created a man made humanitarian crisis for the two million Palestinians who live there. Half of them are children. The results are predictable.
War follows war. Each conflict obliterates what little was rebuilt from the last, a devastating cycle of destruction that smashes essential civilian infrastructure. The 2014 war was particularly destructive. So was the one before it. The one before that too. Any new reconstruction fund is not starting from a neutral position but is instead trying to fill a hole that previous conflicts and a continuing siege have dug deeper and deeper over many years. It is a bottomless task. The physical destruction is immense.
The infrastructure has collapsed. This is not hyperbole. For most Gazans, the electricity is on for only a few hours each day, a crippling reality that shuts down hospital equipment, halts water pumps, and plunges entire neighbourhoods into darkness for most of the day. The water is poison. The coastal aquifer, Gaza's primary source of fresh water, is almost entirely contaminated by a combination of seawater intrusion and untreated sewage, which makes more than ninety five per cent of tap water unsafe to drink. Sanitation systems failed long ago. They now release millions of litres of raw effluent into the Mediterranean Sea every single day.
The human cost is staggering. Unemployment is catastrophic, hovering around fifty per cent and rising even higher for the young, leaving an entire generation with no prospects and no escape. The housing deficit is measured in the tens of thousands of units. Countless families remain displaced from past wars, crammed into inadequate flats or living with relatives in conditions of extreme overcrowding. Building materials are rare. Israel's blockade severely restricts the import of 'dual use' items like cement and steel, which its security establishment argues could be diverted for military purposes by militant groups. This makes large scale rebuilding an almost impossible challenge. So the money is one thing. The reality is quite another. This plan enters a world of broken systems.
The political calculation is complex
The political calculation is complex. For Donald Trump, this initiative is a direct extension of his presidential foreign policy, a real estate developer’s approach to peacemaking that prizes transactional deals over the grinding work of traditional diplomacy. He wants a visible success. He wants it on his terms. Announcing a multi billion pound fund allows him to project the image of a global statesman, a dealmaker still shaping world events from outside the White House. The Board of Peace is a private vehicle, letting him operate without the constraints of the state department he so often disdained while in office. It is a powerful narrative for a potential political comeback.
Israel’s calculus is just as layered. The government in Jerusalem knows that without its explicit cooperation, no building materials will ever cross the checkpoints into the Gaza Strip. Its approval is essential. From a security perspective, some in the Israeli defence establishment have long argued that managed economic development could, in theory, reduce the impetus for violence by giving young Gazans some prospect of a future. A more cynical view is that engaging with a Trump-led project builds credit with American Republicans and provides diplomatic cover. It allows Israel to look constructive on the Palestinian issue without making any territorial or political concessions on statehood. It is a low risk venture.
Then there is the question of the money itself. The board names no donors. The most plausible financiers are the same Gulf monarchies that signed the Abraham Accords, nations like the United Arab Emirates which have both the deep pockets and the political will to underwrite such a scheme. For them, this is a way to counter Iranian influence in Gaza, which extends to financial backing for militant groups. This plan offers a different source of patronage. It also allows them to be seen helping Palestinians while simultaneously strengthening the new regional architecture built on normalisation with Israel, a delicate balancing act designed for domestic and international audiences. It bypasses old orthodoxies.
Finally, the plan lands squarely in the middle of a fractured Palestinian political scene. It is an intervention. The schism between the Fatah led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas administration in Gaza has paralysed national politics for nearly two decades. This project exploits that split. By creating an external body to manage reconstruction funds, the plan directly challenges Hamas’s control over Gaza’s economy and governance, threatening to make it irrelevant. It aims to cultivate a new class of local leaders and contractors who are dependent on the board’s patronage, creating a powerful alternative to the existing militant leadership. This is divide and rule. For the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, it is another humiliation, a demonstration of its irrelevance in Gaza and a confirmation that major decisions about the Palestinian future are being made by Donald Trump, Israel, and Arab states without its consent.
This has been tried before
This is not a new idea. Gaza is a graveyard of donor conferences and reconstruction plans. Billions have been pledged before. The pattern is depressingly familiar, a grim ritual where international donors convene in places like Cairo or Brussels after each round of intense fighting to pledge billions for rebuilding schools, hospitals, and homes that are subsequently damaged or destroyed in the next conflict. The money often arrives late. Sometimes it never arrives at all. The pledges made at a 2014 conference in Egypt, for instance, saw only a fraction of the promised $5.4 billion delivered years later. But the central failure is not financial. The Board of Peace’s $2.45 billion announcement changes nothing fundamental about why these past efforts collapsed.
The real problem is physical. It is about concrete. For any serious rebuilding to begin, vast quantities of materials must enter the Gaza Strip. Yet Gaza has been under a tight Israeli and Egyptian blockade since 2007. Israel, citing security concerns about Hamas diverting materials for military use, maintains a strict list of restricted ‘dual use’ goods, which includes the very steel bars and bags of cement required to rebuild anything more substantial than a temporary shelter. This system, known as the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, has throttled previous efforts, turning building projects into painfully slow and expensive bureaucratic ordeals. The new board’s proposal makes no mention of the blockade. It says nothing about how it will guarantee the entry of materials. This is a fatal omission. Without a sovereign port or a fully open land border, Gaza is entirely dependent on Israeli permission to rebuild.
Then there is the violence. Bombs undo blueprints. The Board of Peace announced its financial plan in a New York meeting room even as Israeli forces were killing Palestinians in Gaza. A ceasefire is not holding. No sane contractor will deploy machinery, and no insurer will cover a project, in an active or barely frozen conflict zone where hostilities could resume at any moment. Investors are not fools. Reconstruction requires a baseline of security and a credible belief that the new infrastructure will not become a target in a few months or years, a condition that simply does not exist while ceasefires crumble and casualties are reported. This board has no mandate to enforce peace. It is a financial instrument, not a peacekeeping force, and its money is worthless without a durable political settlement that it has no power to broker.
The plan is silent on these two critical points. It addresses the symptom, which is destroyed infrastructure, while ignoring the twin causes, a crippling blockade and recurring war. Until there is a political framework that lifts the economic siege and guarantees a lasting cessation of violence, any money poured into Gaza is simply being sunk into the foundations of the next ruin. Without ironclad agreements to open the borders and a monitored political process to end the fighting, this $2.45 billion pledge is not a foundation for a new Gaza but merely the latest entry in a long and tragic ledger of failed intentions. It is a plan for accountants. It is not a plan for peace.
What to watch for now
Three clear signals will determine if this plan is real.
The first is transparency. The money is a mystery. The Board of Peace has promised $2.45 billion without naming a single donor, a critical omission that leaves the entire project's political character undefined. Where is it from? The identity of the backers, whether they are Gulf states pursuing the logic of the Abraham Accords or American private interests aligned with Donald Trump, will reveal the true purpose of the initiative. A refusal to name the sources of this vast sum would suggest the money is either not fully committed or that its patrons fear the political consequences of being linked to the scheme. Follow the money. Or its absence.
Then comes the cement. Any serious reconstruction requires thousands of tonnes of building materials, a flow of goods which is entirely dependent on the permission of Israeli authorities who control all access to the Gaza Strip. Watch the crossings. The Israeli body COGAT will be the agency to announce any change to the list of permitted imports, and the volume of trucks passing through the Kerem Shalom crossing will be the ultimate physical proof of intent. A few symbolic deliveries will mean nothing. Only a sustained, high volume movement of steel, aggregate, and heavy equipment would signal a genuine shift in Israeli policy.
Finally, the project needs legitimacy. The UN is watching. Although the announcement was made in New York to coincide with the General Assembly, it was a fringe event, lacking the formal endorsement of the international body. This must change. Look for formal partnership agreements with established agencies like the UNRWA, which runs schools and services in Gaza, or UNOPS, the UN's project management office. Their involvement would bring expertise, accountability, and neutral oversight. Without it, the Board of Peace remains little more than a private political instrument, its money unable to buy the international consensus required for success.
Sources. BBC News World: Trump's Board of Peace unveils $2.45bn plan to begin Gaza's reconstruction. Al Jazeera: Board of Peace plans $2.4bn Gaza reconstruction as Israel kills seven.
Analysis. Drafted with AI assistance from the sources listed above and reviewed by an editor before publication. Jnews links to the organisations it writes about.
