Our Wednesday News Analysis | Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is the nail in Gaza’s coffin

US President Donald Trump has declared the three-month “ceasefire” in Gaza a great success, and now wants to move on to phase two of his so-called “peace plan”.

Trump has set a five-year timeline for Gaza’s transition. But the figures simply don’t add up.

The world body has warned that, even if Israel stops its blockade tomorrow, it will take decades to reconstruct Gaza,
effectively from scratch, to house those of its 2.1 million inhabitants who survive.

According to estimates from the UN Development Programme, in the best-case scenario, it could take seven years to clear some 60 million tonnes of rubble.
Other UN surveys suggest a more realistic timetable of 20 years, with 10 years to clear unexploded ordnance.

The UN’s trade and development arm further warns that Israel has erased 70 years of human development in Gaza and destroyed nearly 90 percent of the cropland,
leading to “the worst economic collapse ever recorded”.

Schools, universities, hospitals, libraries, and government offices are all gone.
And Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line” that divides Gaza into two has annexed in all but name almost 60 percent of what was already a tiny territory,
one of the most densely populated on the planet.

The fact is that these enormous hurdles to restoring life in Gaza to anything approximating “modernity” barely register in Trump’s peace plan.

What does success look like?

• Israeli soldiers have killed more than 460 Palestinians since October, including at least 100 children.
• Israel has levelled another 2,500 buildings, the last of the few that were still standing.
• And amid a continuing humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel through its blockade of food, water, medicines, and shelter, at least eight babies are known to have frozen to death as winter temperatures plummet.

Marking the transition to the new phase, Trump announced last Friday a “Board of Peace” to determine the enclave’s future.

“Peace” here is being used in exactly the same Orwellian sense as “ceasefire”. This is not about ending Gaza’s suffering. It is about creating Big Brother-style narrative control, selling as “peace” the final eradication of Palestinian life in Gaza.

The narrative spin is that, once Hamas is disarmed, the board will take on the job of Gaza’s reconstruction.

The implicit assumption is that life will gradually return to normal for the survivors of the two-year genocide Israel has carried out – though no Western leader is acknowledging it as a genocide, or cares to find out how many Palestinians have actually been killed in the onslaught.

But, as we shall see, peace is definitely not what the board is aiming to achieve. This is a cynical exercise in smoke and mirrors.

The term “board” hints not only at Trump’s preference for the language of business over politics. It alludes too to the business opportunities he intends to make from Gaza’s “transformation”.

His plan is to strip the United Nations – and thereby the international community – of any oversight of Gaza’s fate.

We are back to the time of viceroys. Colonialism is again out and proud...

Read more: Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is the nail in Gaza’s coffin

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THE TWO-STAGE KILLING OF PALESTINIANS IN GAZA

Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2629876

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud
Published January 19, 2026

A colleague, an editor at a widely read outlet that centered on Gaza throughout the two-year genocide, recently voiced his frustration that the Strip is no longer a main focus in the news.

Why is Israel determined to keep Gaza suspended on the edge of collapse?

Why does it obstruct stabilization and delay movement to the second phase of the ceasefire agreement?

The blunt answer is that Israel wants to preserve the option of ethnic cleansing.

Senior officials have openly advocated permanent occupation, demographic engineering,
and the denial of any Palestinians returning to the destroyed areas east of the Yellow Line.

And the media? For its part, the Western media has begun rehabilitating Israel’s image, reinserting it into global narratives as if collective extermination never occurred.

More troubling still, parts of the so-called pro-Palestine media appear to be moving on — as though genocide were a temporary assignment rather than an ongoing moral emergency.

He hardly needed to say it. It is evident that Gaza has already been pushed to the margins of news coverage — not only by the mainstream Western media, long known for its structural bias in Israel’s favor, but also by outlets often described, accurately or not, as “pro-Palestine.”

At first glance, this retreat may appear routine. During the height of the genocide, Gaza demanded constant attention; after the genocide, less so. But this assumption collapses under scrutiny because the genocide in Gaza has not ended.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded since the so-called ceasefire was declared in October, despite repeated claims that large-scale massacres had ceased. These are not isolated incidents or “violations” — they are the continuation of the same lethal policies of the last two years.

Beyond the daily death toll lies devastation on an almost incomprehensible scale. More than 71,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, with entire neighborhoods erased, infrastructure pulverized, and civilian life rendered nearly impossible.,,

Read more: The two-stage killing of Palestinians in Gaza

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OPINION - WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MOTHERS AND BABIES IN GAZA SHOULD LEAVE US DEEPLY, COLLECTIVELY ASHAMED

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-01-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/what-is-happening-to-mothers-and-babies-in-gaza-should-leave-us-deeply-ashamed/0000019b-d0b1-d2f8-af9b-f3f30cd70000

By Lucy Aitchison
Published January 19, 2026

As maternal mortality surges in post-war Gaza, and newborns face cold, infection, and malnutrition, pregnancy and childbirth are daily fights for survival. Women and their babies, universally noncombatants, are suffering disproportionately – and serve as a measure of our moral failure

A Palestinian woman and her baby in eastern Gaza after Israeli airstrikes last March. Credit: Bashar Taleb/AFP

As a physician, I am trained to expect differences in health outcomes between populations. I was not trained to witness a collapse so profound that maternal mortality regresses by decades within a generation. Maternal and infant outcomes from the river to the sea are sickeningly graded.

Most Jewish women in Israel enjoy (or are subjected to, depending on one's point of view) extensive prenatal testing, a risk-averse approach to birth, and some of the best maternal and infant outcomes in the world. A system of well-baby clinics guides mothers through the first months and years of life, providing basic screening and routine immunizations.

This impressive system begins to fray when other Israeli citizens are considered, including Palestinian citizens of Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Outcomes are poorer, prenatal oversight is less consistent, and births are more complicated.

Babies in incubators at Khan Yunis' Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza last month. Credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters

The scale and duration of the war in Gaza have created living conditions that are incompatible with health or dignity. The population has endured levels of physical destruction and psychological trauma that defy comprehension. Women and their babies – universally noncombatants – bear a disproportionate share of this suffering.

Further along the gradient are Palestinian women in the West Bank. There, high-quality health care can be purchased, but access is deeply unequal. As I have seen in my work as a physician, if a pregnant woman lives in a village with limited medical infrastructure, the outcome of her pregnancy may depend not on medicine but on the opening hours of Israeli military checkpoints or the sudden absence of health workers due to army operations or settler violence.

Young pregnant women in Gaza today face severe nutritional deprivation, inadequate shelter, and unsafe water. Depending on the season, they endure extreme heat or cold and damp conditions. Pregnancy and childbirth in Gaza have been transformed from physiological processes into daily fights for survival.,,

Read more: Opinion - What Is Happening to Mothers and Babies in Gaza Should Leave Us Deeply, Collectively Ashamed