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The Lawfare Podcast
Lawfare Daily: Trump's Board of Peace and What's Next for Gaza, with Joel Braunold
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- [00:00]
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- [01:34]
Joel Braunold
Who is going to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza? And are people willing to just pay if the reconstruction is just on the Israeli side? The Qataris have, during the Doha Forum has now said that they're not willing to invest on the Israeli side of Gaza. It's seemingly clear the Saudis are not willing to. So will the UAE be the only ones funding on sort of that side of Gaza? Again, unclear. What is that going to look like?
- [01:59]
Scott R. Anderson
It's the Lawfare podcast. I'm Senior editor Scott R. Andersen with Joel Braunold, Managing Director of the Center Project.
- [02:06]
Joel Braunold
One of the main stays for Israel has to try and avoid the internationalization of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and what's going on in Gaza and with the border peace and all of these different international vehicles, even though they're dominated by President Trump, goes against that in a pretty hardcore way.
- [02:24]
Scott R. Anderson
Today we're discussing the Trump administration's new Board of Peace and the role it appears poised to play in rebuilding and maintaining peace in Gaza. So Joel, we are recording this on January 20th. This is the first year anniversary of the second Trump presidency and really one of the big foreign policy accomplishments, I think one of the ones that at least I would argue is more well earned among the various plot as this administration sometimes claims, is the fact that it's achieved this peace plan in Gaza that now has buy in from the UN Security Council to some extent by and from a number of regional actors that hit a milestone of its own this past week, at least according to the administration, which said they're officially entering phase two of that plan, which ultimately is supposed to end with a restructured Gaza and a peaceful Gaza, a resolution of a lot of the issues that have been outstanding there. Talk to us about where we are, what this means to be entering phase two and where we actually are in terms of the trajectory out of the Gaza crisis we've all been living through for the last several years.
- [03:27]
Joel Braunold
Thanks Scott. And it's great now in 2026 to continue our quarterly updates and always a pleasure to be with you in lawfare. So for the listeners to be reminded, the Gaza plan that President Trump put together was really a three phase affair. Phase one was really a hostage release, prisoner exchange deal that would end hostilities and set up the main contours which was there would eventually be a commitment of a full Israeli withdrawal, a commitment that Hamas would disarm and that would not be in control and that they would give up the hostages, Israel would release prisoners and that the war would end. And so that was phase one, just sort of those broad contours to agreement. Phase two, which we'll talk about was how does Gaza get to a new governance structure and how has Gaza reconstructed? And then phase three is how does this tie into a wider political process with a political horizon in terms of a pathway forward for Palestinian self determination. So after the plan was announced and endorsed by both sides, I mean President Trump took what he thought was yeses sort of fudged between phase one and phase two back. Just after the UNGA back in September, all but one of the Israeli hostages and alive and dead have been returned. There's still one missing body that is still holding up quite a bit of the deal. But that's been success. First of all, the IDF has withdrawn to the first line of withdrawal. So the Israelis are still in control of around I think it's 52 or 53% of Gaza. Hamas is in the other part of Gaza, there's around 40 to 50,000 Palestinians living on the Israeli side of Gaza, and the vast majority of the population are on Hamas side of Gaza. Since then, you've had the US Create something called the cmcc, the Coordinated Military Civilian Command center, where for the first time, really, the US has taken operational control of, are really of Gaza. The Israelis still have the ability to go in, but traditionally, most of the time they've been checking with the Americans. Sometimes it's after the fact, but you've got CENTCOM basically having a base in Kiryat Ghat and having like 28 other countries come in, where since that point, they've been trying to work out every different technical solution to every problem that Gaza could face. And as you said last week, President Trump and his two main leaders on this, Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff, announced that they're moving to phase two, where they announced the establishment of this Board of Peace with multiple committees as well as a Palestinian technical committee, which for them is the beginning of the ushering in of the next phase, which should lead to Hamas disarmament or decommissioning of its arms. I should say when we look at the text of the agreement, opening up of Rafah in both ways, and we can talk about that, still stuck. The beginning of reconstruction and then potentially IDF withdrawal and the deployment of the iasf, the International Security Stabilization Force, that should be taking up those positions. Each of those are a complicated question. It's still extremely unclear. And today is Tuesday, on Thursday. So in two days, President Trump should be revealing the initial countries that have signed up for the Board of Peace and its seemingly expansive mandate. But that's where we're up to, and I'm happy to go through each part of the Board of Peace. And what does that look like as we go forward?
- [06:43]
Scott R. Anderson
So let's start, Joel, with this Board of Peace, because I think this has been the biggest news that's come out certainly over the last couple days. And it's kind of an extraordinary, extraordinary organization with an extraordinary structure that's very much centered on Donald Trump, the man. And then with a composition of these bodies where you've got a set a Board of Peace that he seems to be taking the lead in forming as the chairman of the authority to form. But that provides some options where you can have some countries buy a seat on this Board of Peace with a billion dollar contribution. And in the first year of its existence, which I guess has officially kicked off now, or will kick off shortly, talk to us about what we know about the structure, who's involved so far, and who we expect to be involved come Thursday and in the weeks come after when we get a sense about who may have actually paid this billion dollars to sign up and participate.
- [07:39]
Joel Braunold
So I think it's very important that we go back to what is the purpose of the Board of Peace, what its legal mandate has been from the UN Security Council, where it seems President Trump is taking it, and what it's actually mandated to do according to the unsc. So if you rem. So President Trump comes out with this 20 point peace plan that the parties agree to, he's widely plaudited by everyone in the world for being able to stop the war and to try and move forward. And then he basically twists the arms of everyone. And we had a podcast with former Ambassador Jeff Feltman when we went through this, where he basically gets the UN Security Council to give him and this Board of Peace the authority to run Gaza till I think it's like November 2027, where there'd be a Board of Peace and whatever organs that it does. But the UN Security Council, of course, is limited to Gaza. And at the time, Ambassador Feltman and myself sort of went through the reasons why different people would have agreed to give the US this ability, which is pretty unique. It's not an organ that is created by the UN Security Council. It just welcomes its creation and basically gives it its ability to run the territory. And it was really because people were fed up of the conflict, recognized that the US Was the only one who could restrain Israeli action. And that being useful to President Trump seemed to be the best mentality forward, specifically on this conflict. And so the UN Security Council gave authority to this organ that was going to be created specifically on Gaza. So President Trump announces the Board of Peace, and when he announces it, he announces that there will be a Board of Peace, but doesn't say who's going to be on it. And then he announces three committees. The first is what is called the Executive Committee of the Board of Peace. Again, when announced this was last week, we still didn't have a chart or anything else of the Board of Peace. And he appoints to that committee Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner. I mean, no one's surprised by that. AJ Banger, who's the head of the World Bank. Again, you know, probably not that surprising for anyone. And then we have three names that, you know, one is the former Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gabriel. Okay, then you've got Sir Tony Blair, who, you know, as we mentioned, Blair's been around. Some people thought that the Blair Institute was the one who created the concept of the Board of Peace. And then lastly we've got Mark Rowan. Mark is the head of Apollo Capital. He's a billionaire hedge fund manager, was until recently the chair of the Jewish Federation of New York and a very prominent Republican donor and had been in the running to be Treasury Secretary according to reports. So he's also there. Unusual. But in the appointment it says that this executive board is about leaders with diplomacy, development, infrastructure, economic strategy. Okay, cool. And that each executive board member will have a detailed portfolio critical to Gaza's success. Okay, so all right, it's about Gaza, apparently. And this is the announcement from the White House. Okay. And about governance, capacity, regional relations, reconstruction, investment, large scale funding, capital mobilization. Cool. In light of the operating model, the chairman appoints two additional advisors to the Board of Peas. One is Aryeh Lightstone, who has been Kushner's man on the ground. Another one is Josh Gruberman, who is technically in charge of federal acquisitions. Again, very interesting, but sure, why not? And they're basically chaired with leading day to day strategy and operations and translating the board's mandate and diplomatic priorities into a disciplined execution. All right, then it gets slightly more complicated. So then you've got Nikolai Manadinov, who was the former UN Special representative for the Israeli Palestinian conflict. He's a former Bulgarian Foreign Minister. He was very highly well thought of by both parties. He's appointed as the high representative for Gaza. Okay. And he is the on the ground link between the Board of Peace and something called ncag, which NCAG stands for the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. This committee of 12 technocrats that was announced the day before. It's chaired by Dr. Ali Shah, who's a former deputy minister of the PA and he's also announced in this announcement. Okay, so that all seems to make sense. And that basically you're going to have Nikolai work with Engag as the link between them on all issues of governance, reconstruction, development, coordinating, coordination, civilian security pillars. So far, so good. Hey, it doesn't seem that complicated. You've got an executive board, you've got a rep to the Palestinian technical committee, you've got a Palestinian technocrats who are appointed, who are 12 of them. And then what would be the last one? Okay, who's going to run the isf? And so then the next announcement is that Major General Jasper Jeffries is appointed the commander of the ISF where he'll basically lead demilitarization, safe delivery of humanitarian aid and reconstruction materials. Okay, again, perfectly logical. Doesn't seem out of the ordinary. Actually very reasonable and well thought out, which for the Trump administration is not often things that people associate. Okay.
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Scott R. Anderson
And the isf, we should note something un its Security Council expressly authorize as part of its broader packaging.
- [12:47]
Joel Braunold
Yes, all of this is very much as the announcement says, is in line with the UN Security Council resolution. The announcement then continues. And this is where, okay, we're having another body. So in support of the office of the High Representative, which is Nicolae's office, N ancag, which is the technical committee, Agaza Executive Board is being established. So we've got the executive committee of the whole Board of Peace. And now there's an executive committee of the Gaza, specifically for Gaza. And this is supposed to help governance and delivery of best in class services to advance peace, stability and prosperity for the people of Gaza. So who's on this now, Gaza Executive Committee? So Steve Wyckoff, he's also on the main board. Jared Kushner is also on the main board. Minister Hakan Fidan, the Turkish Foreign Minister. Minister Ali Al Thawadi, who is the Qatari representative. General Hassan Rashad, who's the head of Egyptian General Intelligence. Blair, who again is on the previous one. Mark Rowan, who again is on the previous one. Minister Reemal Hashemi, who's the UAE representative. Nikolai, that makes sense. He's the high rep, Yakir Gabai, who is an Israeli Cypriot billionaire who is part of sort of Jared's inner working team. And then Sigrid Kag, who is the un, the Secretary General's representative for humanitarian assistance in Gaza. So we suddenly have an additional executive board only dealing with Gaza. And then you've got an executive board of something called the Board of Peace. Right. So that's sort of the model now. Most of the news articles have now taken what is now happening at Davos, which is, well, the Board of Peace clearly is bigger than Gaza. But before we get there, and we can get that, because this is a podcast about Israelis, Palestinians, Gaza, at least this episode, I really want to concentrate on this vertical because it seems like what you've got is that you've got the four guarantors of Gaza, so the U.S. egypt, Turkey and Qatar all having representation. You also have the UAE having representation. And then you've got a bunch of billionaires, a UN rep, Nikolai being that, and the technical committee. So it seems like that is the probably right amount of people. The Israelis, however, have reacted furiously. And a very rare public condemnation by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Trump administration, furious that the Turks and the Qataris, who the Israelis blame for October 7th and for being pro Hamas and with the Turks, really see them almost as a new Tehran, really, that they are on this executive board for Gaza. You know, this isn't just, oh, Erdogan and the emir are on, like some big board of peace. This is them in the real details of this. And, you know, whether it's just for public consumption or not, Prime Minister Netanyahu has furiously reacted to this and has ordered his foreign minister, Giron Sar, to raise this with Marco Rubio. But it's already been announced, so it's very unclear what's going to happen. You've also, as I said, have this 12 member technical committee that was announced. They were announced in Cairo. There had been a lot of channels going backwards and forwards. It was welcomed by the PA in Ramallah, and actually the State department welcome the PA's welcoming of it in Ramallah, which again, freaks out the Israelis, because for the Israelis, there should be no pa. But if the PA is recognizing it, what does that mean? Also, the Hamas said that it's willing to give up its governing functions to this new technocratic committee. And the other factions, you know, Palestinian Islamic Jihad has reacted negatively. But in general, there's been a support for at least this beginning of the technocrat committee. Seems out of the 12, there's two, two names that are sort of closer to Dahlan, who sits in the uae, who's sort of a competitor to Mahmoud Abbas. But in general, one of them is the brother of a PA minister. As I said, the chair is a former PA deputy minister. I mean, okay, it's not pa, but all these people have governed in some capacity before. So it's a technocratic committee because it's not made up of the political factions as such. But no one's losing sleep in the Palestinian arena of who these technocrats are, who is going to be the technocratic governance of Gaza. But we're sort of still stuck. So this has been announced and we'll get to Davos in a second. But just on this, Rafah is still not open. And the Israeli Security Cabinet on Sunday night, at least from the leaks publicly in their frustration, the fact that the Turks and the Qataris on the executive board for Gaza have said they're not opening Rafah in both directions, the technocratic committee has been blocked from entering Gaza by the Israelis. So how can they possibly do their job. It's very unclear who their civil servants will be. So who will actually be running Gaza? We still don't know which countries have committed to the isf, though today it seems that the Moroccans have said that they will donate and contribute troops in some way. We are still unclear about what disarmament will look like. And the Israelis are like, we expect every AK47 to be gone, whereas for others it seems, well, let's start with heavy weapons and tunnels and let's see where we go from there. And there's a lot of difficulties in terms of how the second stage goes, because one of the big questions, Scott, is Israel still controls 52% of Gaza. 47% of Gaza is still in the hands of Hamas. So what's the plan? Right, so everyone's saying Hamas has to disarm. Hamas has to disarm, Hamas has to disarm. Okay, so if Hamas agrees to disarm, does that mean that reconstruction can happen on both sides of Gaza? And if it does, does that mean that the IDF withdraws to the third line, which was part of the peace plan, and then people feel comfortable investing. By people, I mean Gulf states feel comfortable investing in what's going on. What happens if Hamas doesn't disarm? Well, one of the, I think the 16 point of the plan said this plan will still happen even if Hamas doesn't move forward. So in that case, there's been this, I think it's called Operation Sunshine or Hope Rise or something, where supposedly around Rafah there'll be sort of a mega development that's developed as sort of like a site to demonstrate what the new Gaza could look like with the aim of making the Israeli controlled side of Gaza look beautiful and amazing and encouraging the population to move over there, leaving Hamas by themselves there. And then either the IDF or the ISF goes and physically disarms Hamas. It's unclear, but that's another modality. But I think one of the biggest challenges, there's really three right now. Number one, the Israelis are furious that the Turks and the Qataris are as involved as they are. They've already said there will be no Turkish and Qatari troops on the ground. So how do you get to a Hamas disarmament without Turkish and Qatari involvement on the ground is unclear. Number two, who is going to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza? And are people willing to just pay if the reconstruction is just on the Israeli side? The Qataris during the Doha Forum has now said that they're not willing to invest on the Israeli side of Gaza, it's seemingly clear the Saudis are not willing to. So will the UAE be the only ones funding on sort of that side of Gaza? Again, unclear. What is that going to look like? And the third difficulty is the governance. This technocratic governance needs the ability to move in through Rafah. When is Rafah going to reopen? Because it needs to reopen both ways. The Egyptians and the Palestinians and the region have rejected just a one way exit of Rafah into Egypt. Egypt, they want it both ways. And so far the Israelis have said no. And so again, it's like, as we move into phase two, will the Trump administration now put pressure on the Israelis to actually hold up their end of the bargain even as they search for this last remaining body of a hostage, or will they not? And so that's sort of a collective as well as Then how does the ISF come in? Because all of these questions are surrounding the same problem set if Hamas complies, it's far easier to get countries to donate troops. If they're not trying to sort of shoot at Hamas. The Israelis are convinced that Hamas won't comply, and even if they do comply, that they're basically faking it and will hide in the shadows ready to kill anyone who disagrees with them. And therefore it's all a con anyway. And ultimately we need to give Trump this ability to try. And when he fails, we'll then go back in and finish the job unrestrained by hostages being there and with the full support of the Americans. I mean, that's sort of where the Israeli mentality is. And sitting behind all of this is that this year, 2026, is Israeli elections year. So whether the election happens early, sort of in May, or it goes all the way till Oct, running an election while giving sort of Qatar and Turkey a say over Gaza after war on October 7th and everything else is not a particularly good vote winner. And so the Israelis are definitely not incentivized to go along with this. And yet they, more than probably any other country on earth, are the most dependent upon President Trump. So that is just on that vertical, just on the Gaza side of things. What's Blair going to be doing? What's Mladinov going to be doing? How can the technocratic committee move forward? When will the ISF get troops? All of this stuff is dependent upon will Hamas disarm? And then who gets to say that they've disarmed enough? What's the linkage between what's happening in Gaza and the west bank is another big question and how all of that will play out. But just before we hit the Davos and there's other crazy parts of the border peace that I know we want to talk about. That's the Gaza vertical, which actually was the mandated purpose of by the UN Security Council of this Board of Peace.
- [21:45]
Scott R. Anderson
So that's really useful overview, very thorough. I want to break it up a little bit for people who haven't been following, can't digest all that at once. Let's start with the Board of Peace part of it, which is the particularly the extra Gaza part of it, because it is strongly suggested in these documents, in these statements, the Board of Peace is a body at some points framed as a rival to the United nations or a replacement to the United Nations, a broader peacemaking operation that obviously is aiming to fund itself in part potentially through these billion dollar contributions for perman membership or lesser contributions, presumably by some unknown assembly of people. We'll get a little more clarity on this later this week after we record this podcast. Do we have a sense about what the broader purposes this is likely to be leveraged for? What context is going to be applied? Are we talking about Venezuela? Are we talking about other things in the region? What is the vision for this Board of Peace and what does that tell us about how it's going to intersect with this Gaza special vertical, as you describe it, which is the one part of its operation that seems to be fleshed out so far, unclear.
- [22:48]
Joel Braunold
So as you said alongside, so President Trump seemingly invited every world leader. I love that we've had tweets all week being like, I've been invited to the world of peace, I've been invited to border peace. You've been invited to border peace. Right. So it seems like every member of the United nations, including China and Russia and like, you know, Belarus and everyone else and the Israelis, they've all been invited to participate in the Board of Peace and to join. There is no cost, by the way, you get a three year membership. Everything, by the way, is at the admission of the chairman. And as I said, by the way, in November, people are like, oh, that's interesting. This is not President Trump being the chairman as virtue of him being the president of the United States, he reads the UN Security Council resolution, is naming him in his individual capacity, which means that he thinks this is going to continue for as long as he chooses it to continue. You. So he is acting both as the U.S. representative and being the chair. Sure, why not? And that he's inviting people, everyone to Join this club. And so if you join and you sign, you get a three year membership. But if you want to have an exclusive membership, that is just forever. And I can't remove you unless I choose to remove you because I've got all the power. You can pay a billion dollars and then you're there forever. Okay, cool. You can read the whole charter. A bunch of different organizations have that. I know Times of Israel publish the whole thing. The charter is like a slap D 14 point charter that basically lays out that the chairman has the full authority to do anything he wants. You need like a 2/3 majority of all voting members though. He gets to set the agenda. So I don't know how you'd get there. He needs to appoint a successor should he become incapacitated. Again, very unclear. And then he can form executive boards as he sees fit and all these other things. And this is, I think what is driving people sort of potty about this whole thing being like this is clearly a rival, unless. So in some people's estimations of sort of the neoconservative, the concept of having a rival UN of democracies is wonderful. Right. This is something that people have dreamt of. And then he invited China and Russia and sort of different various non democracies to join. And so this dream came crashing down into a Trumpian dictatorship basically where President Trump gets to say the rules of the road. And it seems very clear that since the agreement on Gaza, President Trump has become very enamored with this concept of let's not have big international treaties, let's just put points down and let's then just hammer them out. And so, you know, this has been tried to be replicated on Ukraine and Russia and I'm sure in other places he just wrote to the president of Egypt, try and do something with Ethiopia. Like there's something like he likes this mentality of being the guy people come to to solve conflicts. He boasts constantly about how many wars he's he solved and other things. And each one I've solved the war. Here it is. And so I think honestly he wants an institution to capture that and that if you want to have a seat at how he thinks about foreign policy, this is the place you can sit. The only place the UN of course has granted this authority is in Gaza. And that's why I think you have this fleshed out. And people are sort of torn between they want to support the president's efforts in Gaza within their own mandates and remit, but yet do not want to replace the United nations of a Security Council of five to a Security Council of one, which has weird legal authorities. And Scott, you're the lawyer and I'm not. But while President Trump's the president, he can do what he wants. But if the US Is going to be bounded by a new international organization and the charter says that it should have the. I think, what is it? The characteristics of an international organization, I think you need a treaty vote if we're going to be bonded by that. And somehow I don't see this getting a two thirds majority in the Senate. So how this survives post President Trump, very unclear, at least in a US Sense.
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Scott R. Anderson
Yeah, it is really interesting. I will just note as a legal perspective, interesting. The UN Security Council did do two things legally. It authorized the stabilization force which we'll get to for a second. And then it did say hey, you can establish entities with legal personality. So in theory there's a charter derived obligation on member states to recognize the legal personality of this body so it can hold property and it's international legal person. It can enter into treaties. That's not unusual for international organizations, but it is like MIZA has some official status countries will feel compelled to recognize. One thing it doesn't have is privileges and immunities which actually addresses in the charter. That's something that you have seen in other cases like after the US occupation of Iraq when the UN Security Council sanctioned that there was an effort to to guarantee some degree of privileges and Immunities that wasn't included here, which actually is a big complicating factor about how this organization will operate. Its charter and the UN Security Council resolution suggests it'll negotiate privileges and immunities. I'm not sure how that's going to go exactly. I mean, I suspect the Trump administration will probably grant it privileges immunities to the extent it can and I believe it can under existing kind of legal framework as it is an international body that the United States presumably will have a membership in. But beyond that, it's a little bit complicated. Needless to say, it is a real question about where exactly this goes, time horizon, why. But I think the key point here is the Board of Peace is one thing, and we have to figure out what exactly the intent is with that so far because it's a bit of an open question. We'll find out more in the days and weeks to come. Let's go to the Gaza Executive Board then and talk about whether this operates because this does seem like a place where you're getting a little bit more serious because there are serious involved people involved in here. We have who was previously worked for the United nations previous, I believe, minister of defense for Bulgaria before his UN career.
- [32:25]
Joel Braunold
I think he was a foreign minister. But I might be wrong.
- [32:27]
Scott R. Anderson
Maybe foreign minister, maybe I'm misremembering, maybe possibly both, you know, a couple of serious people here. Obviously it has a lean towards the Kushner circles to some extent and that of course overlaps substantially with the Trump circles, although not entirely. You could imagine a Trumpier board of people working on this issue set or more pure Trump. Maggie Group people talk to us about what, what we think this is communicating, how we think this is likely to operate, especially because it has so much buy in from regional actors except for Israel, at least at present. What do we get a sense about how this is going to come through and particularly how is it going to tie to funding? Because presumably a lot of the Gulf states that are represented here, uae, Qatar, not Saudi, although maybe Saudi is going to be at the higher level. They're going to be the big ones who are expected to foot the bill for big chunks of at least the early stages of Gaza repair. So how does this intersect with that?
- [33:18]
Joel Braunold
So as I said, it really comes down to decommissioning straight disarmament. And should the IDF withdraw to its next line in the agreement? If the IDF withdraws, I can see most of the Gulf deciding to come in as well as European countries and others through like a World Bank Trust Fund help fund the reconstruction of Gaza. Should Gaza remain sort of divided between the 47 and 52%, I find it far less likely that groups will decide to fund just on the Israeli side. Would the UAE be the sole country that decides to fund that? Maybe, maybe. I don't think that's a guarantee, but it could. But I can't see the Qatari. I think the Qataris already said that they weren't willing to fund on the Israeli side. So where you're going to get the required funds to do this is very unclear. And it was reported in the Israeli press a while ago that the Trump administration was demanding a billion dollars from the Israelis for getting rid of the rubble and others. And so, you know, but these are small amounts comparatively to what's going to be needed. So the executive board, as I said, is a mixture of Trump officials who are currently there. Blair Mladinov, a UN representative, Kushner's sort of friends, a Blair friend like sort of Kushner's friends with like Mark Rowan and Yaki Gabai sort of doing maybe the finance side of things. And then you've got Egypt, uae, Qatar and Turkey on this executive Gaza committee that's supposed to help Nikolai as the high rep. And Nikolai is the representative to the Palestinian technical committee and also to Ramallah. And we know that because Nicolae went to the region two weeks ago and met with Prime Minister Netanyahu and with President Abbas's inner circle to have these conversations. So this is what the operation structure is. Again, the Israelis have said very clearly and we heard in the Mar A Lago press conference on 29 December, President Trump said, I expect Netanyahu to do the right thing by the West Bank. No one's sure what that means, but when pushed on it, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about Palestinian Authority reforms. So one would assume that if the PA wants to be involved, they're going to need to reform. Now you mentioned that Saudi isn't on the executive committee. Saudi was not a guarantor of the Gaza peace plan. So it's not surprising. And if you read carefully the statements coming out of Saudi and what they've decided to get involved in, they've decided to put their chits behind Ramallah. Like they want to get involved in education reform, on financial reform, they've helped kick in some money to the pa. And so I think that for the Saudis, the most important part of this is how does this link to a wider pathway forward for Palestinian self determination? I think that One of the challenges of this executive board that they're going to need to do is to make sure that as phase two is built out, how does this link to the last part of the Gaza plan, which is points 19 and 20, which is sort of Israeli Palestinian political process that leads to some level of self determination. And that of course would go into regional integration as well. So I think the Saudis are holding their powder dry for that. And if they can see that, and they can see that that's real, then that's when they would probably decide to throw their hat in the ring. But until that point, let the uae, let Qatar, let Turkey figure out all the other parts. But I think they're more interested in ensuring that you've got a strong Ramallah, a Ramallah that's reformed, a Ramallah that should there be a reintegration, not of Hamas, because I can't ever see that, but of a different political party that would represent a more Islamist dynamic into the plo, that they're integrating into a strong PLO and a strong sort of reformed Fatah movement rather than a weak, decrepit one that could easily be taken over. So I think that's why I would see that. And in many ways, Scott, it sort of reflects the ongoing fight between the UAE and Saudi we're seeing regionally, with Saudi and others looking to maintain the integrity of different territorial aspects, whether that's in Yemen or Somalia, you can even argue in Syria at different points, whereas the UAE and the Israelis have far less problems sort of supporting separatist movements, Somaliland and other things. And so I think that again here the Saudis see the PA and the plo, despite its challenges and criticisms, as something to invest behind rather than trying to pick your own leadership and hoping that works out well.
- [37:27]
Scott R. Anderson
And that brings us to the third tier, which I want to spend a little time on, which is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. There's a clear intersection here between this and the questions of Palestinian self governance, reform of the Palestinian Authority. This is the body that's supposed to be on the ground doing the administering, although we don't know who the civil servants will be. We don't know who's going to be working for it exactly yet whether they can't even access it right now, as you noted earlier in the conversation. But we do know a couple of the key figures here. What does it tell us about who the factions are that are seen as being credible enough that at least this body thinks they can play this role? How realistic does that seem from your perspective? And how does that intersect with the broader PA political dialogue around issues like reform and leadership transition, which obviously they are as a matter of biological reality from Mahmoud Abbas facing at some point in the next few years, although he's beat expectations so far. So how does this body seem likely to intersect with all those broader conversations which have to be resolved before you can get to the end state that the 20 point plan envisions?
- [38:30]
Joel Braunold
So there are two different paradigms. Okay, paradigm one, you build the perfect technical democratic liberal with a small L society in Gaza through this technocratic committee, free of corruption, free of all of the challenges. And then whatever works there, you then import back into the West Bank. Okay. So that you develop an idealistic society in Gaza and then import it back into the West Bank. Right. The other one is that you reform the west bank and then you import the reforms into Gaza. Okay. Sort of think of it as like a competitive race about who can do it first. But let's be honest, Scott. Right? And if we're just being realistic, the majority of the international community really don't care about mathematics standards, Right. And they're not really concerned about vaccine mandates or whatever else it might be. That Palestinian law, they care about prisoner payment reform, they care about incitement and education, religious content, you know, security reforms. Make sure there's a functioning judiciary system, okay? So as much I think as that can be taken from the existing Palestinian legal frameworks that are not controversial, I'm pretty sure they're going to take in like land registry, all these sort of like basic societal functions. What day is trash pickup? What are the taxation rates like, all of this sort of stuff. Now, seeing as that a lot of people want to make money here, what is the operating environment? Who do you need to get concessions from? What are tax rates? I don't know if people are going to play around with those in Gaza vis a vis Ramallah and whatever else. But while the Trump administration doesn't have a policy towards the West Bank, Ramallah's still main operating formula is to try and be as useful as possible to the US So I can't see them being irritants as long as it doesn't touch on what they see as their core national interest. So if the US Wants to flip around with some tax rates or some special concessions and they need Ramallah to okay them, to make sure that the technocratic committee feels okay with it, fine. Ramallah wants there to be a dotted line between them. Well, let me like to control the technocratic Committee, that's not going to happen. So they want to have a dotted line. Is that dotted line Mladinov? Is there an additional dotted line? You know, it seems like at least finance wise the functioning of the Gaza technocratic committee will not be funded out of PA bank accounts. It will come from something else. Right, that was an important thing from the Israelis to show this isn't the pa. So what's the banking structure? How do they fund their civil servants? But you know, when people talk about education reform, I mean there's not going to be an additional 50,000 teachers just suddenly show up. All of the UNRWA teachers that Israel seems to hate will probably just go and get re employed now as teachers of this new technocratic committee who now need to operate. Same with the, you know, healthcare, all the different things. I think that when it comes to military, the guy they put in a former Passaf security general as in charge of internal security police. And again this gets to a question. Who's going to be doing a disarmament? The most likely thing I've heard is that you'd probably have like a significant force of Egyptians with a token force of Palestinians, that you would increase the amount of Palestinian police increasingly and that if Hamas is going to give up any weapons, they'd give them up to other Palestinians. But one of the challenges got is that in return for dis. I keep saying disarmament, it's not actually the term. In return for decommissioning, Hamas wants some level of legitimacy. And of course the PA does not want to give Hamas legitimacy because giving them legitimacy hurts them. Now ideologically, Turkey and and Qatar are very happy with Hamas getting legitimacy. And if it can't be Hamas because they can't be in charge a different Islamist party, whatever else it might be. And so you've got a push and pull where the PA don't want to see Hamas rewarded for disarmament. They want to see them sort of accept the PLO principles that Abbas has set out where it's one person, one gun and that whatever democratic decisions are made at the plo, they're governed by so can you get them into the plo? And of course the Israelis are sitting in wait saying if Hamas or this transformed party or this new party joins the plo, does that mean that the PLO is closer to now this Islamism part or are they going to be nationalized? If they're nationalized, are they nationalized in a way that we think are reformed or not reformed? So the Israelis are still keen to say, look, in the UN Security Council resolution, yes, it talks about a pathway and everything else, but that the PA and PLO have to reform to such an extent that it's never going to happen. Who gets to set what the reform agenda is? Who gets to say that if the PA has reformed and has not reformed? These are huge questions. And who gets to do it? If the Israelis get to set the red line and then say if they've met it or not, it's never going to go anywhere because there's never an incentive for the Israelis to ever say that they've successfully done it. If it's the U.S. traditionally, that hasn't worked. Though now that you've basically internationalized Gaza, which is something that the Israelis have always resisted but have now fallen into to, could you conceive that the Gaza Executive Committee becomes the place that determines whether the reforms have gone far enough to either welcome or not welcome? And then if you are, I mean, having Egypt and Qatar and Turkey and even the Emirates on that, and then plus or minus, basically people completely loyal to President Trump and not loyal to Prime Minister Netanyahu make that determination is not an ideal circumstance either for Prime Minister Netanyahu or any other future Israeli prime minister. And in many ways, the Israelis have found themselves now completely dependent upon an international structure that might not be the United nations, but is completely and totally and utterly dependent on President Trump, who is and wants to demonstrate his success about getting through this agreement. And as I said before, the Israelis believe this is all fanciful, that there's no way that Hamas is going to disarm, they're not going to demobilize, they're not going to decommission. And ultimately the only people willing to go in and physically do it is the idf. And ultimately President Trump will realize that and will give them permission to do that. I think that's what the Israelis are banking on, whether even if they are banking on it, more force can actually achieve their political objectives. I don't know why anyone thinks that that is true, but that's at least the current operating modality that you're hearing out of Jerusalem.
- [44:42]
Scott R. Anderson
So that brings us to the fourth tier, if you will, although it hasn't really been framed that way. The other body here, that's the stabilization force that we have. We have an American general who is going to be involved with this, General Jasper Jeffers, somebody with experience in centcom, experience in Special Operations Command. Talk to us a little bit about what we know about the role he's going to be playing that American troops, American military will be playing and where we know international forces. You mentioned Moroccan troops coming in earlier. I know previously we talked about Indonesian and Pakistani potential aid contributions. Do we have a sense about what that's going to look like and how that's going to report to the ncag, to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, to the Executive Committee, to the Board of Peace, how it integrates with this broader structure to give a sense about who's actually going to be deciding the more military operational, or at least overseeing the military operational decisions that presumably this body will at some point soon be making?
- [45:34]
Joel Braunold
Well, it's very clear that the ultimate decision maker is the chairman of the Board of Peace, which is Trump. Right. So before anyone gets any imagination to anyone else is in charge of. He's in charge. Okay. So who he defers authority to, I don't know and I don't think anyone knows. I think one of the challenges about why it's been difficult to get troops for the ISF is what's its mandate? And since the day that the plan was put down, there's been a question, is the ISF responsible for disarming, for the disarming or the decommissioning of Hamas? Are they right. Are they actually physically going in and taking them off? Because if that's the case, you're not going to get troops for it. And that's the IDF's argument. No one's going to do it. We're going to have to do it. So then then if they're not doing that, are they then doing local policing? Are they going in and doing sort of police operations? Again, most countries don't want their soldiers to be doing that. Let Palestinian police do that and we'll support. Right. The Egyptians can be in a big supporting role. We can do drone support. Lots of things we can do. Right. If you want to do a buyback program, can we like be there at the warehouses and buy the back? Fine. Where I think there is support for what the ISF could do is to act as almost like a peacekeeping force or sort of sitting in between the IDF and Gaza and sort of just sort of try and keep the peace, make sure no one comes near the fences. Right. And so what's the deployment look like now for the Israelis? Their thought was that if the IDF pulls back, the ISF moves into those positions and prevents the ISF from filling that void. And so how that actually looks is a big question. And what the mandate will be will dictate which of the troops will come in and what they will do, I can't imagine we're going to see U.S. troops actually on the ground. I think that far more likely it could be private military contractors that we saw during the Gaza Humanitarian foundation disaster. I genuinely don't know how else to talk about that. But I think you already have the CMCC with other countries there. So I could imagine that the CMCC would be that the Israelis have made it absolutely clear there will be no Turkish or Qatari troops on the ground. Okay, but could they be in the Sinai? Could they be in Jordan? There's no troops on the ground. Are there drones in the sky? I don't know. But that's complicated and very, very, very, very, very concerning for Israeli security interests should the Turks manage to get a foothold or the Qataris in Gaza. And that's something that is keeping the Israelis up at night. And by the way, again, it could all be for public consumption. But, but having the Turkish foreign minister sit on the. It's one thing if Erdogan was on the Board of peace with 100 other world leaders. Knock yourself out. To have the Turkish foreign minister as one of 10 people on the Gaza Executive Committee is a different thing and something that I think the Israelis find very worrying. And so what is the mandate of the isf? Where are they deployed? What is their mandate? I think is essential to see who's going to come. I think the most likely. The Israelis don't want to be in a position where they would ever be operating in a place that they could kill someone else's troops. They don't want that. It's an absolute nightmare scenario for them. And they also want Hamas to demobilize and disarm and they don't want to leave a power vacuum. So how does it work? I can't imagine the ISF being deployed anywhere except for on the outskirts of Gaza and maybe along like the Philadelphia with an Israeli security umbrella, whatever else, maybe around the Rafah crossing, some stuff like that. But to actually be deployed inside Gaza, I find it very difficult to believe for all the reasons I've just listed. But we'll see. I mean, that one of the big questions will be that and when the Board of Peace meets, not just for the signing of this charter. Now at one point they're going to have to create policies and mandates. And what is the mandate of the isf and how does that all spell out? I think it's going to be interesting. Does Kiryat got become a permanent base and there are some Gulf countries and some others who would like to see what other mechanism the ISF does in Gaza eventually to be repeated in the West Bank. The PA has been calling for years for international protection against what they see as Israeli encroachment and of course, sort of violence by extremist vigilantes against Palestinians and also Palestinians attacking Israelis and, you know, have some international observers there. The history of international observers has not gone well. We've seen people get killed and others by Israeli troops at different points. And so the Israelis. One of the main stays for Israel has to try and avoid the internationalization of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and what's going on in Gaza and with the Board of Peace and all of these different international vehicles, even though they're dominated by President Trump, goes against that in a pretty hardcore way. And I think that whereas many of us are of the belief that when President Trump leaves office, whatever that may be, and all of these things disappear, if the Israelis have become enamored with whatever mechanisms are there, they basically say to the next administration, you keep this in place or get rid of it and whatever else. We're also speaking today on the day that Israel sent bulldozers and destroyed UNRWA's headquarters in East Jerusalem to basically say it's done. And they're really rejecting any UN Anything within that. And I think that's the beginning of the implementation of the Knesset laws against UNRWA across the board. So if it's being replaced now by like a board of peace type mechanism, does that become even more intrusive? Because unlike the UN that there's no real consequence for the Israelis upsetting United nations, one might argue there would be significant consequences for them. Upsetting a US Administration that's sort of running an international task force. I'll say this. The dependency that the Israelis have on the US have created real significant weak spots for them. One is on, like, military assets that we've seen Netanyahu say he wants to end us Basically, the military aid, that was sort of a headline three weeks ago. Lindsey Graham said, let's do that as quickly as possible. President Trump, it was reported, is against that move. So that's one weak spot, sort of military dependency and sort of the aim to build their own ammunition. But another one is now that they've opened up internationalization of their own backyard to an international community, even if it's run by the US Is a loss of sovereignty. It just is. And what does that look like? And how does that work? And. And what will that mean? Not Just for Gaza, but potentially also for the West Bank. The Palestinians have managed to steal a march on the Israelis by getting the international community in there, even in this bizarre format of the Board of Peace. But it's definitely an advantage to what they had before.
- [52:03]
Scott R. Anderson
So before we wind up this conversation, I do want to take a step back from the legal documents, the charters, all these structures are being put up to look back at the facts the of on the ground in Gaza and where we are, particularly on two different fronts. One is the humanitarian front. We are a few months past now the Global Humanitarian foundation as you described it, disaster of a few months where we got to a point where famine was declared in Gaza by international authorities. Real genuine crisis moment. I'm curious if you could talk to us about the state of humanitarian conditions there. We've seen a move back towards UN and other channels for distributing different types conventional channels for distributing international assistance. They are represented notably in the Executive Committee. That's the one place you have a clear UN representation is on the humanitarian front. I believe I understand what this person's mandate is, who's on that body. The other front is the security front. Because we've last few weeks or months we've been watching this closely. There was never a, I would say full extended cessation of hostilities for more than a week or two. I think the longest you've ever got of anything meaningful. But it has seemed to up tempo a little bit the last few weeks in terms of Israeli operations and potentially responses. I don't know if it's to the point where you can say there's a breakdown. I would say probably not. But nonetheless there has been a little bit of a spike for the last few weeks. So talk to us about those two fronts. What are the conditions like on the ground that these new bodies that are now established are going to be entering into and working with.
- [53:28]
Joel Braunold
So let's start on humanitarian and then we'll go to security. So there's two different things happening at the same time. One, the level of humanitarian goods coming in has gone up significantly. And I think the latest UN report was like it's at a level that's sustaining but not sustainable if that makes sense. There's enough that it's avoiding starvation and disastrous. But we need to get back to a sense of normalcy and we're not there yet. The CMCC that I mentioned before has really taken over humanitarian access and since that point and that's been one of the biggest successes of the Trump 20 point plan so far with the release of the hostages and prisoner releases and everything else. You've had a stabilization of humanitarian access. At the same time, the Israelis have completely changed the way they register international humanitarian organizations. They want vetting, lists of staff, I don't think beneficiaries. But who's funding you? They really are trying to kick out anyone that they see as connected to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as other entities that they feel could be seen as anti Israel. And they basically deregistered a vast swath of international humanitarian organizations. Some have made it through, so Catholic Relief Services has made it through all hands and hearts, Samaritan's Purse, a few others. So they now have Israeli registration and can therefore have customs and import licenses and bring stuff in. Those who don't have lost their registration and their staff are being kicked out of the country. So there's a huge uproar and you've seen that about Israel deregistering these. The registration is an inter ministerial committee headed by the head of the Minister for Diaspora affairs and Combating Anti Semitism. So you can see where the Israelis are sort of situating this. So it moved from the welfare ministry to that. So it has a real foreign policy, sort of public diplomacy lens on this stuff, which you don't traditionally assume in the humanitarian lens, but the Israelis do. And so that's been a real backwards and forwards in terms of criticism. And the Israelis, as I said today in unrwa, have basically made their red line. No one can touch unwra. And if you touch unwra, it's done. And I think that the World Food Program has been stepping up increasingly and going Gaza to do a lot of the other work. Again, the majority of the population is still on the Hamas side of Gaza. They're not on the Israeli side of Gaza. So that's where the access has been coming from and through into that part of Gaza, providing people with hot meals and kits and everything else. The Israelis have not allowed permanent housing or more stable housing, but they have allowed tents and better tents in. There's been big questions about tents that require metal poles. Could they be dual use? So we're back to all of these games. It's been a pretty windy and rainy winter. A lot of people have been very worried about what's been going on there. So it's by no means solve and there's still a significant amount of suffering. But comparatively to where we were before there was the ceasefire agreement, it's remarkably better on the security front. When it first happened, there were questions that Did Hamas break the ceasefire at one point? And the Israeli cut out at one point and said, yes, Hamas did break. And then did the Israelis break? There was like a bunch of Hamas fighters they found on the Israeli side near Rafah under a tunnel. And there was a big question about how you could get them out of there. The Israelis wanted them to surrender their weapons. There was a big question about, well, that wasn't the agreement, it was to decommission them. Went backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. They were trying to work it out. Could this be a test case for the whole ceasefire? The Israelis also decided to take out a senior Hamas commander and then told the Americans later and that was them pushing the envelope to see can we really get away with basically just continuing to hit high value targets if we see them and then just ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission. And it seems like so far that's been the modality that's worked. Even though the CMCC is there and is supposed to be in charge, the Israelis, at different points, when they see a Kassa or they see something that they think is threatening to them, have gone in and taken action. And really the Americans haven't really done anything. So on the security sense, it seems like there have been times that Hamas has. Have attacked Israeli positions and Israel has enforced a ceasefire through force. There's been other times that Israel has taken preemptive strikes against what they see as legitimate targets, even though that is a violation of the ceasefire. Absolutely. But so far there hasn't really been consequence, which has made many supporters of the Palestinians just think this whole thing is a farce anyway. And the fact that it's like an open talking point in Israel, that there's a desire to go back into the Israeli, the Palestinian side of Gaza. I will say, after one of the violations, the Israelis did want to increase the amount of Gaza they were controlling and the Trump administration said no. So it hasn't been like an unrestrained Israeli ability to do whatever they want. There has been some level of restraint. And honestly, we're going to go back to the question of how far can the Trump administration push the Israelis when it comes to the reopening of Rafah and the ability for this technocratic committee to operate, because if they can't even get themselves into Gaza, then what is anyone talking about? So I think that's going to be the next case. And, you know, who are they going to be talking to? What's going to be their civil servant structure? These are questions, not just that the technocratic committee are asking, but also the Israelis are asking and I think that sort of the plane is being built while it's been in the air and how this is going to land is going to be a complicated situation.
- [58:28]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, needless to say, there is a great deal more to talk about among all those points. We are out of time for today. We'll have to revisit it in the next conversation in this series. I'm sure we're going to have many more episodes in this series for too long, but until then, Joel Braunold, thank you for joining us here today on Lawfare Daily.
- [58:43]
Joel Braunold
Thanks so much, Scott.
- [58:47]
Scott R. Anderson
The Lawfare Podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free, you can become a Lawfare material supporter@lawfaremedia.org support supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does help. And be sure to check out our other shows, including National Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. You can also find all of our written work@lawfaremedia.org this podcast is edited by Jen Patchett with audio engineering by Kara Schillen of Go Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music, and as always, thank you for listening.
- [59:29]
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