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Published On 16 Jan 2026
Donald Trump has named former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his so-called “Board of Peace“, which is expected to oversee the United States president’s 20-point plan to end Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.
The White House said on Friday that Blair would be among the board’s founding executive members, alongside Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.
The other members are Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, and Robert Gabriel, a US deputy national security adviser.
The board members “will oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success”, the White House said, including “governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization”.
The announcement comes just days after Witkoff announced the launch of the second phase of the US-brokered plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians since October 2023.
The Trump administration has said Trump’s plan is “moving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction”.
But Palestinians have questioned what that will mean in practice, as Israel continues to carry out deadly attacks across the coastal enclave and restrict deliveries of humanitarian aid, in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that came into effect in October.
A 10-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Friday, as members of a planned Palestinian technocratic committee sat down for the first time in Cairo to prepare for the rollout of phase two of Trump’s plan.
In Friday’s statement, the White House confirmed that Ali Sha’ath would lead the technocratic committee, which is expected to handle day-to-day governance in Gaza in lieu of Hamas.
The Palestinian group had previously said it was ready to abandon its governing duties in the enclave as outlined under the Trump plan.
There was no immediate response from Hamas and other Palestinian political factions to the makeup of the Board of Peace’s executive board.
The participation of Blair, who served as British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, has been a major point of contention, after his name was floated as a possible candidate months ago.
The former UK Labour Party leader strongly supported the US-led “War on Terror” in the early 2000s, and joined then-US President George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and another newly-named executive board member, is also a staunch supporter of Israel who previously suggested that Palestinians are incapable of self-governance.
Kushner’s family also has strong ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.
In 2024, Kushner underscored that Gaza has “very valuable” waterfront property, saying that Israel should “move the people out and then clean it up”.
