Trump’s Board of Peace: A Reality Show Masquerading as Diplomacy

Netanyahu gets his security blank check, Palestinians get erased, and Trump auditions for a Nobel while staging a distraction from Epstein.

Trump and Netanyahu walked into the East Room and declared history had just been made, though the only thing historic about the spectacle was the sheer density of delusion. Trump, in his usual stream-of-consciousness patter, proclaimed “eternal peace in the Middle East” as if he were pitching a timeshare. He thanked half the world’s leaders, bragged about moving the embassy to Jerusalem, drifted into a monologue about teleprompters, and then anointed himself chairman of a brand-new “Board of Peace.” You could almost hear the groan of the marble busts in the hallway, Woodrow Wilson is rolling in his grave, and even Kissinger probably spat out his soup.

The “deal” itself? A masterpiece of omission. Hamas, the actual party Israel has been fighting in Gaza for two bloody years, wasn’t invited to the party. Trump admitted it outright: “They were the one group that we have not dealt with. I have not dealt with them.” But never fear, he assured the world, “Arab and Muslim countries” would handle Hamas for him. In other words, he’ll outsource the central conflict to third parties and then slap his name on the plaque. Think of it as Trump University for peace processes: you pay up front, get a certificate, and the actual substance never materializes.

On paper, the deal demands Hamas release all remaining hostages, alive or dead, within 72 hours. Gaza is to be “demilitarized,” with Hamas’s weapons, tunnels, and factories destroyed. Those militants who promise to “peacefully coexist” are granted amnesty; those who prefer exile are offered safe passage abroad. A new “transitional authority” would police Gaza under the watchful eye of an international oversight board chaired, naturally, by Donald J. Trump himself. And for the flourish: a vague promise of conditions that might someday support a Palestinian state, dangled like a carrot on the end of a very long stick.

What’s not in the deal is just as revealing. There is no clear mechanism for Palestinian governance beyond “not Hamas and not the Palestinian Authority.” There’s no concrete guarantee of aid, no timeline for lifting the blockade, and no credible plan for reconstruction in a territory already reduced to famine and ruin. Netanyahu made it explicit that Israel will keep a “security presence in Gaza for the foreseeable future,” which effectively means the war simply gets rebranded as “peace.” And of course, the Palestinians themselves, those not wearing Hamas armbands but trying to survive in the rubble, were nowhere near the negotiating table.

Trump’s plan is less a blueprint for peace than a photo-op dressed up as scripture. It checks Israel’s boxes, flatters Trump’s ego, and leaves the central issue, the people actually living in Gaza, unanswered.

Netanyahu played his part with a mixture of flattery and menace. He beamed at Trump, called him Israel’s greatest friend, praised the B-2 bomber raids on Iran, and promised Gaza would remain under Israel’s “security responsibility for the foreseeable future.” Translation: Israel isn’t leaving. Not tomorrow, not in 72 hours, not when the “Board of Peace” meets for its first catered lunch. Netanyahu even dangled the familiar threat: Hamas can accept Trump’s terms and disappear quietly, or Israel will “finish the job by itself.” It’s like a mob shakedown conducted under the klieg lights of a White House press conference.

The absurdity of it all is hard to exaggerate. Trump calls it “the first time in thousands of years” Israel has had his backing, apparently erasing the minor detail that Israel has only existed for 76. He talks about Gaza like a botched real estate flip, shaking his head that Israel “gave up the ocean” when it withdrew from Gaza, as though beachfront property should be the true unit of geopolitical analysis. At one point, he waxed nostalgic: “As a real estate person, they gave up the ocean, right? Who would do this deal?”

And then there’s the pièce de résistance: the image of Donald J. Trump, personally chairing an international “Board of Peace.” He described it as “sort of a beautiful name,” before announcing, with perfect self-parody, that it would be headed “by a gentleman known as Donald J. Trump of the United States.” The guest list, he teased, would include Tony Blair,“a very good man”, and other distinguished names to be revealed later, like some geopolitical season finale. It’s Celebrity Apprentice: Oslo Edition. The only thing missing was a rose ceremony.

The disrespect Trump shows for the Palestinian people is so profound as to be almost biblical. He reduces an entire nation’s aspirations to a side note, insisting they must “take responsibility for their destiny” while simultaneously denying them any real say in the plan that will dictate their lives. To him, Gaza is not a place where two million people cling to survival, it’s just “the ocean” Israel once “gave up,” a bad real estate trade gone sour. This alone should nullify his Nobel fantasies. A man who treats human beings as bargaining chips and corpses as line items is not a peacemaker; he’s a showman auditioning for the role of messiah.

And we might fairly infer that this whole spectacle plays less like a peace initiative and more like another Epstein distraction, a literal production staged to flood the cameras with “historic” optics while headlines about hostages and human rights scroll by unread. The “Board of Peace” announcement is just the latest prop in a White House set built for ratings, a televised negotiation where Trump reads off his list of “kings and emirs” like guest stars and Netanyahu recites his script about “civilization and barbarism.”

So what we saw wasn’t peace, but performance. A reality-TV “deal” in which the hostages are props, the Palestinian state is a mirage, and Hamas is conspicuously absent from the table. Trump got his soundbite about “eternal peace,” Netanyahu got his security carte blanche, and the suffering people of Gaza got another layer of empty promises piled on top of rubble. If this is history, it’s the kind written by the producers of The Apprentice, loud, gaudy, and entirely fake.