Our Wednesday News Analysis | Trump’s Board of Peace and the politics of control

The US continues to be permitted to experiment with the futures of entire peoples and regions (File/AFP)

Gaza — a besieged territory of just 365 sq. km — does not require a new political structure populated by dozens of world leaders, each reportedly paying a $1 billion membership fee. Gaza needs reconstruction, and its people must be granted their basic rights,

and Israel’s crimes must be met with accountability.

The mechanisms to achieve this already exist: the UN, international law, long-standing humanitarian institutions, and, above all, the Palestinians themselves, whose agency, resilience, and determination to survive Israel’s onslaught have become legendary.

The Board of Peace discards all of this in favor of a hollow, improvised structure
tailored to advance US-Israeli political and geopolitical interests.

The history of American power is, in many ways, the history of reinventing rules — or designing new ones — to fit strategic US interests. This may sound harsh, but it is a necessary realization, particularly in light of US President Donald Trump’s latest political invention: the “Board of Peace.”

Some have hastily concluded that Trump’s newest political gambit — unveiled last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos — is a uniquely Trumpian endeavor, detached from earlier US foreign policy doctrines. They are mistaken, misled largely by Trump’s self-centered political style and his constant, though unfounded, claims that he has ended wars, resolved global conflicts, and made the world a safer place.

At the Davos launch, Trump reinforced this carefully crafted illusion, boasting of America’s supposed historic leadership in bringing peace, praising alleged unprecedented diplomatic breakthroughs and presenting the Board of Peace as a neutral, benevolent mechanism capable of stabilizing the world’s most volatile regions.

Trump’s political designs — whether in Gaza or beyond — are not an aberration but part of a familiar pattern

Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Yet a less prejudiced reading of history allows us to see Trump’s political designs — whether in Gaza or beyond — not as an aberration but as part of a familiar pattern. US foreign policymakers repeatedly seek to reclaim ownership of global affairs, sideline international consensus and impose political frameworks that they alone define, manage and ultimately control...

Read more: Trump’s Board of Peace and the politics of control

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WEAPONIZING AMERICA’S ECONOMY IN SERVICE OF ISRAEL

Source: Palestine Chronicle
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/weaponizing-americas-economy-in-service-of-israel/

By Jamal Kanj
Published February 3, 2026

Economic warfare is only the opening act. The dollar is not the only weapon Washington deploys on Israel’s behalf. When sanctions fail, the saber comes out.

US President Donald Trump, during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.(Photo: Video grab)

Empires rarely fall on the battlefield; they implode under the weight of their own arrogance and corruption. The hubris radiating from the White House suggests that this old imperial truth is once again asserting itself.

Trump, like Biden before him, is not protecting American financial dominion or leadership.
By weaponizing economic power, he is undermining the very system
that sustains America’s prosperity and growth.

The irony is vivid: when subordinating the US dollar and economy to the service of a foreign state, Washington is accelerating de-dollarization, fostering parallel financial systems, fueling competing trading blocs, and effectively letting Israel murder the American golden goose.

Unable to compete in the global economy it once championed, Washington now weaponizes its economy, turning trade, finance, currency, and credit into instruments of blackmail. Washington has changed the “rules-based international order” into tariffs, sanctions, asset seizures, secondary penalties, and financial intimidation. Economic power morphed from competition and exchange into a tool of retribution. Nowhere is this tool used more obsessively by the US government than in the service of Israel.

Long before Israel’s genocide in Gaza, successive US administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, abandoned any pretense of restraining the increasingly unhinged Jewish supremacist state. Instead of enforcing international law, Washington built a parallel system of economic and diplomatic power to shield Israel from accountability. The US vetoed UN Security Council resolutions demanding ceasefires, or end the starvation of 2.3 million human beings in Gaza, sanctioned international courts, punished UN officials, pressured humanitarian organizations, and national leaders who dared to insist that Israeli crimes be judged by the same standards applied to all nations.

At the center of this economic war is the overstretched US dollar. Because global trade, energy markets, and financial clearing remain, so far, overwhelmingly dollar-denominated and routed through US-controlled institutions, giving Washington the power to cut nations, banks, and individuals off from the arteries of global commerce. This uniquely American privilege, once served as an assurance for nations to own this stabilizing pillar, has become a bludgeon on behalf of Israel.

At Israel-first command, the United States has weaponized sanctions against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq,Yemen, Venezuela, students, educators, civil society groups, and countless individuals, many with no connection to military activity whatsoever. Their “crime”? Exposing Israeli war crimes or daring to question US complicity. The message is unmistakable: defy Tel Aviv’s engineered US foreign policy, and your economy, your institutions, your very life chances, can be crushed...

Read more: Weaponizing America’s Economy in Service of Israel

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THE FINAL EXPULSION OF PALESTINIANS IS UNDERWAY – AND YOUR INDIFFERENCE ENABLES IT

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-01-27/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-expulsion-of-palestinians-is-underway-and-your-indifference-enables-it/0000019b-fbf3-dee6-a1ff-fffb75120000

By Amira Hass
Published January 27, 2026

The changes in the West Bank – being made under the umbrella of decisiveness – are tectonic and occur at lightning speed. The Israeli opposition remains silent

Palestinians attempting to return to their homes in Tarqumiyah, a city in the West Bank, last year. Credit: Itai Ron

The changes being made under the umbrella of decisiveness are tectonic,
and they're occurring at lightning speed.

They are of biblical proportions.

The official armies of God and their subcontractors are engaged in expulsion and erasure,
in emulating the achievements in Gaza.

These legions of holy warriors are expelling one shepherd community after another,
attacking village after village and school after mosque.

The governmental coup that is driving us backward has an older sister in Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's Decisive Plan of voluntary expulsion, which is lowering Israel into new abysses, day by day. Yet the Zionist opposition, which lent its support, in the form of extra reserve duty, blood and slogans to the war of annihilation and revenge in the Gaza Strip, continues to ignore the inseparable connection between them.

So what will happen when the descendants of Joshua enter the Palestinian cities in the West Bank, set them on fire, shoot at homes and beat passersby with their clubs? Will you, the members and supporters of the Democrats and Yesh Atid, rush to enlist in the army to protect these holy warriors from the Palestinians in the West Bank who refuse to surrender?...

Read more: The Final Expulsion of Palestinians Is Underway – and Your Indifference Enables It