They have called it everything from a “neocolonial farce” to an “insult to international law.” Yet some European leaders still say they want a seat on the Gaza “Board of Peace” (BoP), an administrative body that will play a key role in the next phase of a peace plan to resolve the long-running conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.
Under the 20-point peace plan for Gaza, proposed last year by US President Donald Trump, the Peace Committee will oversee the delivery of aid and the reconstruction process, and will also be the supervisor of the Palestinian administration in Gaza, which is supposed to be made up of technocrats.
Trump announced that he would chair a 15-member Peace Council. The peace plan, including the Council, was formalized in mid-November last year by UN Security Council Resolution 2803.
So far, the main arguments against the Peace Committee have been that the Palestinians have no say in deciding their own future. There is also no end date for the Committee's work, which could in many ways allow for the continuation of what the UN classifies as the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and a violation of international law.
For example, contrary to the 2024 opinion of the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands on the Gaza conflict, the Peace Committee turns what the court called “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination” into a “conditional privilege,” legal researcher Safiya Souti pointed out last month in an article for the American Society of International Law.
The Director of the Committee will be a Bulgarian diplomat
Late last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the director of the Committee would be Bulgarian diplomat Nikolay Mladenov, after Arab countries rejected Trump's first suggestion - former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Mladenov was the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process between 2015 and 2020, and is known to both Israeli and Palestinian politicians.
It is likely that the names of the remaining members of the Board will be announced soon, although it is not clear when. Some reports have suggested that Trump will announce the names this week, ahead of the first meeting of the Board, which is scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland next week. In addition to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey, European countries – the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy – are also expected to be invited.
On Tuesday, however, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article suggesting that the Trump administration could change the mandate of the Peace Committee. Sources told Haaretz that if the Committee does a good job in Gaza, it could be tasked with dealing with other conflicts, including the war in Ukraine, and could serve as a kind of alternative to the UN in the future.
Even before that, it was clear that the Peace Committee would operate outside the United Nations framework in a way that observers have described as “unprecedented.” But the idea of bypassing the UN altogether in the future would raise concerns among potential European members of the Committee.
"Contrary to what has been announced, the appointment of members of the Committee may not take place in the coming days, but rather later this month," Muriel Aseburg, a Middle East expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) think tank, told DW. "The new mandates on the Committee would first have to be distributed to potential members, but if the idea is that the Committee should become an alternative mechanism to the UN, then the enthusiasm could be significantly lower," Aseburg said.
Europeans want to be members of the Peace Committee
In November, EU Commissioner for Democracy and Demography Dubravka Šuica said that EU member states should be on the Board. In December, European leaders issued a statement expressing their support for the idea, saying: “The EU stands ready to support the establishment of a Peace Board and will actively engage in the upcoming steps.”
Should EU leaders be so enthusiastic, given the many criticisms leveled at the Committee? That was the question the Brussels-based think tank Carnegie Europe asked eight experts on the region. Most answered: “Yes – but…”
“The European Union should aspire to a seat on the Committee, but only if it can translate its rhetoric into concrete policy there,” says HA Hellyer, a senior fellow at the Royal Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) in London. “Otherwise, it is just a presence at someone else’s table to lend legitimacy and credibility to a process that offers neither a just nor a sustainable peace.”
“The European Union should consider joining the proposed Peace Committee, but only if key conditions are met,” agrees Hussein Baumi, Deputy Middle East Director at Amnesty International. “However, the Committee’s framework remains unclear, and the political, legal and reputational risks are significant.”
"If Europe gets involved, it should be conditional on respecting legal frameworks and norms," Zaha Hasan, a lawyer, human rights expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told DW. "Otherwise, it will cement war crimes and the dismantling of our system based on law and the rule of law," says Hasan. In an article published in December, she pointed out the impossibility of harmonizing the peace plan for Gaza, as defined by Resolution 2803, with international legal courts.
More influence on conflict resolution
If they were members of the Peace Committee, Europeans could have more influence on the conflict than they have in the past two and a half years, says Aseburg of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. She adds that there are a number of things they can do, “although it is realistically impossible to expect Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on a two-state solution in the short term.”
Europeans can leverage their role as donors in Gaza's reconstruction and continue technical support through existing European missions, such as training the Palestinian police, Aseburg believes: "To have an impact, Europeans should act more unitedly and could cooperate with Arab states, with whom they have more common interests on this issue than with the US."
“Will the Europeans succeed? Well, we certainly won’t see progress without the US, and that’s the only option in the game,” says Asselburg. “That’s why the Europeans should join the Peace Committee and try to influence as much as they can to ensure that the Committee’s policy is in line with international law and humanitarian standards, and to try to achieve a sustainable solution.”
Given Europe's current engagement in the Middle East, and the fact that the EU is much more focused on the war in Ukraine and potential US plans for Greenland, Martin Konecny is not too optimistic. He is the director of the Brussels-based European Project for the Middle East, which promotes evidence-based policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and says:
"Given the broader European leaning towards the US, there is a risk that the European presence in the Peace Committee will be 90 percent formal approval and 10 percent influence. This means that the Europeans will primarily serve to legitimize the plans that the Americans will promote, which will be coordinated with Israel."
On the other hand, Konečni believes that not including it in the Gaza Peace Committee is not a solution either, because then everything will be left to the US. "So, it will be a very difficult balancing act for the Europeans," concludes Martin Konečni.
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