The Kushner-Witkoff Doctrine and the Palestinian Cause

 The recent announcement by the so-called “Board of Peace” of the first batch of founding member states, via its official page on the X platform (@BoardOfPeace), reopened a deep political discussion about the nature of ongoing transformations in some international approaches to the Palestinian issue. This batch included countries from diverse regions and political orientations, including: Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Turkey, Belarus, Paraguay, Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Cambodia, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. This composition reflects a striking geographical and political diversity, suggesting the Board's ambition to build a cross-regional international platform under the banner of "peace and cooperation."
However, this proposal, in its political context, raises fundamental questions about the content of this peace, who defines it, and on what legal and political foundations it is based. The formal diversity in membership does not necessarily mean diversity in references or objectives, especially when this announcement is read in the context of broader shifts in the American approach to the Palestinian issue, particularly what I call the Kushner-Witkoff political doctrine. The momentum of Arab and Islamic representation raises a question mark about the Abraham Accords in a new Trumpian form!
This doctrine is not content with merely bypassing the traditional concept of "economic peace"; rather, it is an extension of the Deal of the Century in a renewed form, moving towards a conscious attempt to re-engineer the entire Palestinian reality, with Arab and Islamic participation, far from national political legitimacy, popular Palestinian representation, and international law references. Since Jared Kushner's public statements, especially during his participation in the Middle East dialogues at Harvard University, it has become clear that the issue is not about injecting investments or improving living conditions, but about redefining the essence of the Palestinian issue, transforming it from a national liberation cause into a purely economic investment management file.
Kushner is the theorist, and Witkoff is Kushner's executive face today, and Trump is the reference. This path becomes even more dangerous with the White House's announcement of the formation of the Executive Council for the Gaza Peace Board, an international body that will oversee the work of the new technocratic management committee in the Gaza Strip, in addition to overseeing the reconstruction and disarmament process. According to the announcement, this council includes the United States, the United Nations, Israel, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, and is chaired by US President Donald Trump, while the so-called "International Stabilization Force" is led by American General Jasper Jeffers, with Nikolay Mladenov appointed as the High Representative of the Council in Gaza.
This structure clearly reveals the nature of the proposed approach: managing Gaza as a security-economic file subject to direct international supervision, not as an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory. General Jeffers will oversee all security matters related to disarming the Strip, securing aid, and reconstruction, while Mladenov will serve as a link between the Gaza management committee and the international executive council, which includes influential political and economic figures, led by Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, American businessman Marc Rowan, former World Bank President Ajay Banga, along with American political advisors.
As for the Executive Council for Gaza, it includes a mix of American, regional, and international officials, in addition to businessmen, and even Israeli representatives, in stark contrast to the absence of any Palestinian representation. Palestinians, the owners of the land and the cause, are absent from the decision-making position, while they are later asked to adapt to the "fait accompli." Kushner was explicit in his direct targeting of the Palestinian Authority, as he did not deal with it as a political partner, but as a "functional obstacle" that must be overcome. This discourse cannot be understood as mere political criticism or a call for reform, but as part of an integrated doctrine that seeks to exclude legitimate Palestinian leadership and open the way for artificial alternatives, whether in the form of local councils, technocratic committees, or new frameworks presented under the name of "peace," while in essence emptying politics of its content. In contrast, the Palestinian leadership welcomed all these formulas and councils and welcomed Security Council Resolution 2803, on which all these solutions are based, imposing facts on the Palestinian ground without a national Palestinian decision.
In this context, the criticisms directed by Kushner at President Mahmoud Abbas and what he called the "old guard" cannot be separated from a systematic attempt to demonize the Palestinian leadership and undermine its moral and political legitimacy. Kushner selectively employed the discourse of "elite corruption" and linked it to the expansion of settlements and what Kushner described as the "luxury of the Palestinian leadership," in an attempt to justify circumventing official representation through direct communication with the private sector or technocratic figures associated with the proposed investment plan.
The danger here lies not only in the discourse but in its profound political consequences. The Palestinian issue is being reduced to growth indicators, number of projects, and volume of investments, instead of being measured by standards of rights, sovereignty, and self-determination. Thus, the Palestinian transforms from a holder of political and legal rights to a "beneficiary" conditioned on accepting the rules of the new game, which is managed outside any sovereign framework in exchange for enjoying some privileges and positions that have reduced the Palestinian issue.
More dangerous is what can be called "de facto separation with Palestinian consent." The proposal of what is known as "New Gaza" comes at a moment of unprecedented exhaustion experienced by Palestinians, in the midst of a war of extermination, a suffocating siege, starvation, and a near-complete collapse of the components of life. In such a context, the risk of accepting any formula presented as a humanitarian solution becomes real, even if it comes at the expense of Palestinian geographical and political unity. At the level of governance and property rights, the proposal ignores both humanity and law. There is no serious talk about the rights of hundreds of thousands of owners of destroyed lands and homes, nor about protecting the civil registry, nor about mechanisms that guarantee citizens' rights in the face of foreign investors, in the absence of genuine rule of law. The land is treated as an empty investment space, not as a legal and human space with owners and established rights.
The real fear is the administrative and political separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank, under the guise of technocratic committees or transitional arrangements promoted as temporary. However, Palestinian historical experience, along with the experiences of peoples under occupation, has proven that temporary solutions often turn into permanent realities, imposed by force and normalized over time to serve the colonial Zionist project.
The danger lies not only in Trump's peace plan or in new frameworks such as the "Board of Peace," but in the Palestinian tendency to accept any formula, towards solutions that divide geography and end unified political representation, in exchange for promises of prosperity without legal or political guarantees under the pressure of war and destruction, especially what the seventh of October left behind as a catastrophe that allowed players to transform the issue from its human rights and legal framework to a humanitarian framework. True peace is not built on bypassing the Palestinian people, but on recognizing their inalienable rights, ending the occupation, and enabling them to determine their destiny freely and with dignity.