Trump gets pledges for Gaza reconstruction and troop commitments at inaugural Board of Peace talks

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump an­nounced Thurs­day at the in­au­gur­al Board of Peace meet­ing that nine mem­bers have agreed to pledge $7 bil­lion to­ward a Gaza re­lief pack­age and five coun­tries have agreed to de­ploy troops as part of an in­ter­na­tion­al sta­bi­liza­tion force for the war-bat­tered Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry.

In­done­sia, Mo­roc­co, Kaza­khstan, Koso­vo and Al­ba­nia have pledged to send troops for a Gaza sta­bi­liza­tion force, while Egypt and Jor­dan have com­mit­ted to train po­lice.

Troops will ini­tial­ly be de­ployed to Rafah, a ma­jor pop­u­la­tion cen­tre where the U.S. ad­min­is­tra­tion hopes to first fo­cus re­con­struc­tion ef­forts.

The coun­tries mak­ing pledges are Kaza­khstan, Azer­bai­jan, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, Mo­roc­co, Bahrain, Qatar, Sau­di Ara­bia, Uzbek­istan and Kuwait, Trump said.

“Every dol­lar spent is an in­vest­ment in sta­bil­i­ty and the hope of new and har­mo­nious (re­gion),” Trump said in thank­ing the donors. He added, “The Board of Peace is show­ing how a bet­ter fu­ture can be built right here in this room.”

The dol­lars pledged, while sig­nif­i­cant, rep­re­sents a small frac­tion of the es­ti­mat­ed $70 bil­lion need­ed to re­build the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry dec­i­mat­ed af­ter two years of war be­tween Is­rael and Hamas.

Trump al­so an­nounced the U.S. was pledg­ing $10 bil­lion for the board but didn’t spec­i­fy what the mon­ey will be used for.

Maj. Gen. Jasper Jef­fers, the leader of the new­ly cre­at­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­bi­liza­tion Force, said the plans call for 12,000 po­lice and 20,000 sol­diers for Gaza.

“With these first steps, we help bring the se­cu­ri­ty that Gaza needs for a fu­ture of pros­per­i­ty and en­dur­ing peace,” Jef­fers said.

The board was ini­ti­at­ed as part of Trump’s 20-point peace plan to end the con­flict in Gaza. But since the Oc­to­ber cease­fire, Trump’s vi­sion for the board has mor­phed and he wants it to have an even more am­bi­tious re­mit — one that will not on­ly com­plete the Her­culean task of bring­ing last­ing peace be­tween Is­rael and Hamas but will al­so help re­solve con­flicts around the globe.

But the Gaza cease­fire deal re­mains frag­ile and Trump’s ex­pand­ed vi­sion for the board has trig­gered fears the U.S. pres­i­dent is look­ing to cre­ate a ri­val to the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Trump, push­ing back against the crit­i­cism, said the cre­ation of his board would help make the U.N. vi­able in the fu­ture.

“Some­day I won’t be here. The Unit­ed Na­tions will be,” Trump said. “I think it is go­ing to be much stronger, and the Board of Peace is go­ing to al­most be look­ing over the Unit­ed Na­tions and mak­ing sure it runs prop­er­ly.”

Even as Trump spoke of the gath­er­ing as a tri­umph that would help bring a more per­sis­tent peace to the Mid­dle East, he sent new warn­ings to Iran.

Ten­sions are high be­tween the Unit­ed States and Iran as Trump has or­dered one of the largest U.S. mil­i­tary buildups in the re­gion in decades.

One air­craft car­ri­er group is al­ready in the re­gion, and an­oth­er is on the way. Trump has warned Tehran it will face Amer­i­can mil­i­tary ac­tion if it does not de­nu­clearize, give up bal­lis­tic mis­siles and halt fund­ing to ex­trem­ist proxy groups, such as Hezbol­lah and Hamas.

“We have to make a mean­ing­ful deal. Oth­er­wise, bad things hap­pen,” Trump said.

Some US al­lies re­main scep­ti­cal

More than 40 coun­tries and the Eu­ro­pean Union con­firmed they were send­ing of­fi­cials to Thurs­day’s meet­ing. Ger­many, Italy, Nor­way, Switzer­land and the Unit­ed King­dom are among more than a dozen coun­tries that have not joined the board but that took part as ob­servers.

Most coun­tries sent high-lev­el of­fi­cials, but a few lead­ers — in­clud­ing In­done­sian Pres­i­dent Prabowo Subianto, Ar­gen­tine Pres­i­dent Javier Milei and Hun­gar­i­an Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Or­bán — trav­elled to Wash­ing­ton for the gath­er­ing.

“Al­most every­body’s ac­cept­ed, and the ones that haven’t, will be,” Trump of­fered. “And some are play­ing a lit­tle cute — it doesn’t work. You can’t play cute with me.”

The U.N. Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil held a high-lev­el meet­ing Wednes­day on the cease­fire deal and Is­rael’s ef­forts to ex­pand con­trol in the West Bank. The U.N. ses­sion in New York was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for Thurs­day but was moved up af­ter Trump an­nounced the board’s meet­ing for the same date and it be­came clear that it would com­pli­cate trav­el plans for diplo­mats plan­ning to at­tend both.

Vat­i­can Sec­re­tary of State Car­di­nal Pietro Parolin told re­porters ear­li­er this week that “at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el it should above all be the U.N. that man­ages these cri­sis sit­u­a­tions.”

Ques­tions about dis­arm­ing Hamas

Cen­tral to Thurs­day’s dis­cus­sions was as­sem­bling an armed in­ter­na­tion­al sta­bi­liza­tion force to keep se­cu­ri­ty and en­sure the dis­arm­ing of the mil­i­tant Hamas group, a key de­mand of Is­rael and a cor­ner­stone of the cease­fire deal.

Hamas has pro­vid­ed lit­tle con­fi­dence that it is will­ing to move for­ward on dis­ar­ma­ment. The ad­min­is­tra­tion is “un­der no il­lu­sions on the chal­lenges re­gard­ing de­mil­i­ta­riza­tion” but has been en­cour­aged by what me­di­a­tors have re­port­ed back, ac­cord­ing to a U.S. of­fi­cial who was not au­tho­rized to com­ment pub­licly and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu re­it­er­at­ed his pledge that Gaza will not be re­built un­til Hamas dis­arms.

“We agreed with our friends in the Unit­ed States: There will be no re­con­struc­tion of the Gaza Strip be­fore the de­mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the Gaza Strip,” he said in a speech to grad­u­at­ing of­fi­cers at an army base in south­ern Is­rael. “Soon, Hamas will face a dilem­ma: dis­arm the easy way – or dis­arm the hard way. But it will be dis­armed, and Gaza will no longer threat­en Is­rael.” —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by AAMER MAD­HANI and MATTHEW LEE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Josef Fe­d­er­man in Jerusalem, Di­di Tang in Wash­ing­ton, Farnoush Amiri at the Unit­ed Na­tions and Nicole Win­field in Rome con­tributed re­port­ing.