Gaza is not for Sale: Davos, Trump’s Board of Peace, and the Pornography of Imperial Power

When Donald Trump unveiled his so-called “Board of Peace” on the polished stage of Davos, the world was invited to applaud a spectacle of diplomacy. Charters were signed. Delegates smiled. Trump proclaimed the birth of a historic institution, one that could rival the United Nations and usher in a new era of peace — beginning, he claimed, with Gaza.

But Gaza was not present in Davos. Only its ruins were. While elites congratulated themselves in Switzerland, Gaza remained a sealed graveyard of collapsed homes, mass displacement, hunger, and trauma. The contrast was not embarrassing to the architects of this board; it was essential. Davos has always thrived on distance — distance from suffering, distance from accountability, distance from the blood price of the systems it celebrates.

Let us be clear: Trump’s Board of Peace is not a peace initiative. It is an administrative extension of violence. Its purpose is not to end injustice but to manage it. Not to dismantle occupation but to normalize it. Not to liberate Gaza but to turn Palestinian suffering into a governable, fundable, and internationally supervised condition.

The optics of the Davos launch already betray the fraud. Fewer than twenty countries signed on. Major Western powers hedged, stayed away, or quietly expressed reservations. Even within the Western alliance, there was no rush to endorse a body whose mandate is vague, whose authority is self-declared, and whose legitimacy is unearned. Yet several Muslim-majority states rushed forward — lending their presence, their silence, and in some cases their signatures. In doing so, they supplied what this project desperately needed: a false moral cover.

This is how empire operates in the twenty-first century. It no longer rules only with gunboats and governors. It rules with boards, councils, funds, and “peace frameworks.” It rules by outsourcing legitimacy to those it once colonized. It rules by recruiting the very states that speak the language of justice to participate in its management of injustice.

The Trump Board of Peace does not ask the central question: Why is Gaza destroyed? Because asking that question would require naming occupation, siege, apartheid, and decades of impunity.  Instead, the board assumes Gaza’s devastation as a starting condition — an unfortunate backdrop against which technocrats, donors, and political brokers can design “solutions.” Reconstruction is discussed without liberation. Governance is imagined without sovereignty. Aid is promised without rights.

This is not accidental. It is ideological. From Balfour to Oslo, Palestine has been subjected to an endless series of international schemes that promise peace while entrenching control. Oslo, once hailed as a triumph, fragmented Palestinian land, outsourced security to the occupied, expanded settlements, and turned liberation into an indefinitely deferred promise. Gaza, which resisted absorption into this architecture of surrender, was punished with blockade.

The Trump Board of Peace is Oslo’s illegitimate child — stripped of even the pretense of statehood and dressed openly in the language of trusteeship.  What makes this moment especially grotesque is the privatization of authority. Influence within the board is reportedly tied to billion-dollar contributions. Peace is priced. Seats are bought. Sovereignty is negotiable. Justice is reduced to a budget line. This is why Davos is the perfect venue. Davos is where inequality is aestheticized, where exploitation is rebranded as innovation, where catastrophe becomes a panel discussion. Launching a Gaza peace initiative there is not tone-deaf — it is ideologically consistent.

From an Islamic perspective, this project is morally void. In Islam, peace (sulh) without justice (‘adl) is falsehood. Neutrality in the face of oppression is betrayal. Reconstruction that entrenches domination is not charity — it is collaboration. A council that governs the wreckage of Gaza without ending the siege that produced it stands outside any ethical tradition worthy of the name.

And here the indictment must widen. Muslim governments that participate in, endorse, or quietly accommodate this board are not “engaging pragmatically.” They are laundering injustice. They are helping transform occupation into an administrative detail rather than a crime. They are choosing proximity to power over fidelity to principle.

History will not ask how complex the situation was. It will ask where you stood. Palestine has always been the moral x-ray of the international system. It reveals how international law bends before power, how human rights are rationed by race and geopolitics, how the lives of some are deemed grievable while others are rendered disposable.

Gaza intensifies this exposure. It shows that humanitarian aid, when detached from liberation, becomes a tool of control. It shows that reconstruction without accountability is simply preparation for the next destruction. It shows that peace processes imposed by the powerful are often nothing more than intervals between assaults.

Trump’s Board of Peace, with its grand rhetoric and thin legitimacy, fits seamlessly into this pattern. It offers the world the comfort of “doing something” without the courage of confronting the occupier. It allows governments to appear constructive while avoiding the real demands of justice.

But Gaza refuses this script. Despite siege, starvation, bombardment, and abandonment, Gaza has not surrendered its claim to dignity. It has not accepted that survival must come at the cost of silence. It has not agreed to disappear politely so that diplomats may congratulate themselves. This is what terrifies power. Gaza is not a humanitarian experiment. It is not a real-estate opportunity.It is not a trusteeship to be administered.

Gaza is a people — rooted, resistant, and unbroken. No board convened in Davos can deliver peace while occupation remains intact. No charter can confer legitimacy while siege persists. No council can govern the ruins of injustice and call it reconciliation. Until occupation ends, until accountability is enforced, until Palestinians exercise full self-determination, initiatives like this will remain what they truly are: The pornography of imperial power — spectacle without responsibility, management without morality, and peace without justice.

And Gaza, even in its devastation, will continue to expose the lie!