Shireen Akram-Boshar
Truthout / July 2, 2026
Trump’s plan offers no end to Israel’s genocide, only an entrenchment of Israel’s control and continued ethnic cleansing.
President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” met in Cyprus this week to revive the board after months of inaction. The board’s main decision out of the meetings has been to separate Palestinians into “humanitarian corridors” that enable Israel to continue its takeover of Gaza.
Over two days of talks on Tuesday and Wednesday, representatives of the poorly-named “Board of Peace” created a plan to open “Hamas-free” zones in Gaza where aid will be distributed.
According to reporting by Israel Hayom – an Israeli newspaper that supports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – the board will establish areas in Gaza that it will “direct” Palestinian civilians to move into. Its plan entails increasingly separating Palestinian civilians from Hamas – a task that will likely be difficult if not impossible. Hamas’s armed wing is only one part of the much broader political organization that has governed Gaza and come to represent the resistance movement against Israel for many Palestinians.
The board has selected the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah as the first area where it will “direct” Palestinians in Gaza to enter in the coming weeks. Israel Hayom states that multinational forces under the board’s control will arrive in the area with “nonlethal weapons” in order to “maintain order in the humanitarian zones” while the Israeli military will expand its control over other areas of Gaza.
These so-called “humanitarian zones” are enclaves facilitating the further concentration of Palestinians in Gaza into smaller and smaller areas as Israel deepens its control over the Strip.
In late May, Netanyahu announced that he had directed the Israeli military to seize 70 percent of Gaza, and that this was only the next step in taking control of the Strip. Palestinians in Gaza have for months witnessed Israel’s “yellow line” moving westward, forcing people to concentrate in smaller areas of Gaza as Israel takes more control of the territory.
The newspaper also says that the board has decided that no concrete will be brought into Gaza to enable reconstruction during this period, but only “temporary reconstruction” will take place, while “medical and other services” will be provided to those who enter the zones. This is yet another indication that the board has no intention of rebuilding Gaza according to the needs of the Palestinian population.
The zones, armed by international forces loyal to the board, call to mind the horrors of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S. and Israel-backed “aid” organization that bypassed United Nations (UN) aid agencies and used private armed contractors to distribute aid in Gaza last year. The military contractors repeatedly opened fire and shot and killed hundreds of Palestinians desperately seeking food.
The goal of these “zones” is, supposedly, to begin the process of transitioning Gaza to its next phase, while encouraging Palestinians to leave Hamas-run areas with the incentive of reconstruction, aid, and shelter. While Palestinians in Gaza will likely be wary of another armed “humanitarian” setup after the horrors of the Gazan Humanitarian Foundation, these zones will also serve to pull Palestinians further away from the promise of returning to their homes and neighborhoods that Israel’s genocide has forced them to leave behind. During each major ceasefire in 2023 and 2025, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians marched back to their homes. Palestinians are unlikely to heed a forcible relocation process ushered in with another promise of aid, this time engineered by Trump’s “Board of Peace.”
On Wednesday, the “Board of Peace” posted on X, writing that “UNRWA [the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees] has no place in the new Gaza. We are turning the page on the complex of perpetual aid dependency & conflict. The people of Gaza deserve better.” The post also re-published a statement by the U.S. mission to the UN conflating pledges to UNRWA with “Fund[ing] incitement” and “terrorism.”
The board was created in part to bypass the UN in Gaza; these statements regurgitate Trump and Israel’s demonization of the UN and its agencies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Though the board criticizes the “complex of perpetual aid dependency & conflict,” the offer they are giving to Palestinians in Gaza is even more dehumanizing – forced relocation and concentration in enclaves, a refusal to meet their wants and needs, including for basic rebuilding, and aid tied to the promise of abandonment of a Palestinian national project.
Last week, The Guardian obtained a leaked draft resolution revealing that the board is planning to grant legal immunity to each of its members – immunity from “arrest, detention or legal proceedings in the courts or other entities in Gaza.” The resolution also says that the board will be “provided” public property in Gaza, “free of charge.”
In mid-June, Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed calling for opponents to fall in line with the “Board of Peace,” entitled “The World May Not Like Trump’s Gaza Plan– But There Is No Alternative.” In it, she insists that “demilitarizing” Hamas is necessary, and that the framework is “backed by meaningful leverage” and can bring an end to the crisis in Gaza.
But Trump’s plan offers no end to Israel’s genocide, only an entrenchment of Israel’s control over Gaza and continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist
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Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ plans to operate ‘Hamas-free humanitarian zones’ in Gaza
Democracy Now! / July 1, 2026
The United Nations is calling on donors to fill a $100 million gap in funding for UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said millions of Palestinians are at risk due to the shortfall, as well as Israel’s massive restrictions on UNRWA’s ability to work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
This comes as Israeli media is reporting the Trump-created so-called Board of Peace will soon begin managing humanitarian shelters in Gaza. The newspaper Israel Hayom reports the first site will open near Rafah within weeks and will be policed by a “multinational force” armed with so-called less lethal weapons. The report also stated that Israel’s military will continue expanding its control beyond the so-called Yellow Line agreed to in the U.S.-brokered October ceasefire. Israel continues to violate the agreement on a daily basis.
