Oslo’s Logic Returns to Gaza
The Trump administration’s newly unveiled “Board of Peace” for postwar Gaza was meant to signal resolve and vision. Instead, it has laid bare a widening rift with Israel — and, more troublingly, a fundamental contradiction within the administration’s own thinking about Gaza’s future.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unusually public rebuke of the plan as uncoordinated and contrary to Israeli policy is not diplomatic theatrics. It is a sober response to a proposal that now stands in stark contrast to President Trump’s own earlier instincts — instincts that, while controversial, at least acknowledged the grim realities on the ground.
President Trump initially floated a blunt but internally coherent idea: encouraging emigration from Gaza as a means of breaking the cycle of radicalization, dependency, and perpetual warfare. That proposal recognized an uncomfortable truth — that Gaza, as currently constituted and controlled, is not governable through technocratic fixes or international panels.
What is being proposed now abandons that realism entirely.
Instead of weakening Hamas’s grip on Gaza, the current plan elevates Hamas’s external patrons — inviting the group’s political enablers and protectors to take a central seat at the table under the banner of “peace.” The contrast could not be sharper.
Hamas Was Not Defeated — Only Deferred
The fatal flaw in the “Board of Peace” concept is not one of optics or procedure, but of power. Hamas was never fully disarmed. It is already rebuilding its networks, reasserting local control, and reconstituting its military and financial infrastructure. Its ideology remains intact. Its command structure, though degraded, survives.
Most damning of all, Hamas continues to wield leverage — grotesquely illustrated by its continued retention of the body of a murdered Israeli hostage, cynically held as a bargaining chip. This is not symbolic. It is proof of control.
No governing board can function in territory where an armed jihadist organization retains coercive dominance. Boards issue statements. Hamas issues threats — and enforces them.
From Hard Truths to Soft Illusions
Trump’s original emigration proposal was harsh, unsettling, and politically explosive — but it was grounded in a recognition that Gaza’s social and political fabric has been shaped for decades by Islamist control. The current approach retreats from that recognition and replaces it with illusion.
Inviting Turkey and Qatar — states with long-standing political ties to Hamas — into the core of Gaza’s governance architecture does not restrain Hamas. It legitimizes it. Hamas does not fear these actors. It relies on them.
Expecting such a board to constrain Hamas is to confuse sponsorship with supervision.
The Oslo Lesson We Cannot Afford to Forget
What makes this moment especially alarming is how closely it mirrors the logic that doomed the Oslo process — not in intention, but in structure. Oslo did not fail because peace was attempted; it failed because terror was never defeated before authority was transferred. Institutions were erected atop armed movements, enforcement was replaced with process, and violations were managed rather than punished.
For those who supported Oslo in good faith, this distinction matters. The flaw was not optimism, but sequencing. Authority preceded disarmament. Incentives flowed despite noncompliance. Violence became leverage rather than a red line.
A board governing Gaza without first dismantling Hamas risks repeating that same foundational error — rewarding survival over surrender and process over power. You can change the members, the mandates, and the rhetoric; if Hamas remains armed, the outcome will not change.
The Conflict at the Center of the Process
There is also an unavoidable structural problem that has gone largely unspoken: the inescapable gravitational pull of Jared Kushner in every iteration of Trump’s Middle East policy. From sweeping plans to improvised boards, Kushner’s presence — formal or informal — appears constant.
This is not an argument about motives. It is an argument about conflict and credibility. No peace architecture can command legitimacy when it is repeatedly shaped by the same unelected figure, insulated from institutional checks and untouched by prior failure. When one architect drafts the plan, curates the board, and defines the strategy, dissent is sidelined and accountability evaporates.
A strategy that never escapes its original author is not strategy — it is inertia.
And inertia, in the Middle East, is not neutral. It is lethal.
Israel’s Rebuke Was Inevitable
Israel’s objection to the board’s composition goes to the heart of the matter. Gaza’s future directly affects Israeli security, yet Israel was sidelined while actors aligned with Hamas were elevated. That inversion alone makes the plan unworkable.
Netanyahu’s response reflects hard-earned experience: Gaza cannot be stabilized while Hamas remains armed, legitimized, and ideologically intact. Any framework that pretends otherwise will collapse — leaving Israel to confront the consequences alone.
This rupture was predictable. It was also avoidable.
Peace Requires Power Before Process
Naming a board is not a strategy. Symbolism is not enforcement. And peace cannot be administered in territory still ruled by terror.
If Hamas is not disarmed, no board will govern Gaza.
If Hamas retains leverage, no peace will hold.
If Hamas’s patrons are empowered, stability will remain an illusion.
President Trump once understood this instinctively. His earlier proposal acknowledged that Gaza’s crisis is not merely administrative — it is existential.
Inviting the architects and sponsors of Hamas’s endurance to oversee Gaza’s reconstruction is not realism. It is Oslo’s central mistake repeated with better branding.
Peace requires power before process. Until that truth is restored to the center of policy, no board — however well named — will deliver what it promises.