Israeli Foreign Minister Sa’ar Set to Join Trump’s Inaugural Board of Peace Talks on Thursday in Washington

By: Fern Sidman

In the gilded corridors of Washington, where diplomacy is often conducted in the language of symbolism as much as in the grammar of policy, a new experiment in conflict management is preparing to convene. On Thursday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, a body chaired by President Donald Trump and conceived in the wake of his Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. According to a report on Saturday at VIN News, the decision for Sa’ar to attend in place of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reflects both tactical calculation and the delicate choreography of an initiative that seeks to reframe the governance, reconstruction, and demilitarization of Gaza under an international umbrella.

VIN News reported that Netanyahu, who will not attend the session, requested Sa’ar’s participation as part of Israel’s engagement with the U.S.-led framework. The prime minister’s absence is notable, though not inexplicable. Netanyahu recently advanced his planned Washington visit by a week to meet President Trump at the White House, where the two leaders focused extensively on the evolving situation with Iran. That meeting underscored the competing imperatives that now occupy Israel’s leadership: the immediate strategic anxieties posed by Tehran and the long-term stabilization challenge in Gaza.

By delegating representation to Sa’ar, Netanyahu signaled Israel’s willingness to participate in the Board of Peace without conflating the initiative with the prime minister’s own direct political capital.

The Board of Peace itself is an institutional innovation born of Trump’s 20-point Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, a framework that culminated in a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in October 2025. VIN News has traced the plan’s genesis to an effort to move beyond episodic ceasefires toward a more structured post-conflict architecture. The board’s formal standing was subsequently welcomed by a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted on November 17, 2025, which authorized the body, in concert with cooperating countries, to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza to support the ceasefire and postwar efforts. In a region accustomed to ad hoc arrangements and fragile truces, the creation of a standing supervisory body represents a departure from precedent.

According to the information provided in the VIN News report, the board’s initial mandate centers on the supervision of Gaza’s temporary governance, the coordination of reconstruction efforts, and the demilitarization of the territory. These objectives, though aspirational, confront a landscape of ruin and political fragmentation. The ceasefire that brought hostilities to a halt has not erased the structural challenges of postwar recovery: devastated infrastructure, displaced populations, and the unresolved question of who will administer Gaza in the absence of Hamas’s armed control. The board’s remit has since been expanded by Trump to encompass global conflicts beyond Gaza, an enlargement that has elicited both intrigue and skepticism among international observers concerned about the scope and coherence of such an ambitious body.

Thursday’s meeting in Washington is expected to address two of the most consequential and contentious elements of the Gaza postwar blueprint: the funding mechanisms for reconstruction and the operational details of the proposed international stabilization force. The United States and the United Arab Emirates have already pledged sums exceeding one billion dollars each for Gaza projects, a financial commitment that signals seriousness of intent but also raises questions about governance, accountability, and the equitable distribution of resources. The challenge facing the Board of Peace lies not merely in mobilizing funds but in ensuring that reconstruction does not become another casualty of political paralysis or factional competition.

Sa’ar’s participation places Israel at the table during what many analysts view as a formative moment for the board’s credibility. The initiative has drawn mixed reactions internationally, with some governments welcoming the prospect of a coordinated stabilization effort and others questioning the board’s structure and the concentration of authority implied by Trump’s chairmanship. For Israel, engagement with the board offers an opportunity to shape the contours of postwar governance in Gaza, ensuring that security concerns, particularly the demilitarization of terrorist groups, remain central to any reconstruction agenda. At the same time, participation exposes Israel to the risks inherent in multilateral processes that can dilute national priorities amid competing international interests.

The diplomatic optics of Netanyahu’s absence are nuanced. VIN News reported that his recent meeting with Trump on Iran suggests that Israel’s leadership is navigating a strategic environment in which multiple existential questions converge. The Iranian file, with its implications for regional deterrence and nuclear proliferation, remains an overriding concern. Yet the stabilization of Gaza, even in the shadow of larger geopolitical rivalries, constitutes an urgent test of whether post-conflict reconstruction can be tethered to sustainable security arrangements. By sending Sa’ar, Israel signals that the Board of Peace merits high-level engagement without subordinating other strategic dossiers.

The broader international context surrounding the board’s creation is fraught. VIN News has reported that some critics view the initiative as an extension of Trump’s personalized diplomacy, raising concerns about institutional durability beyond the tenure of any single leader. Others argue that the board’s very existence reflects a hunger for new mechanisms capable of breaking the cyclical inertia that has long characterized Gaza’s post-conflict periods. The authorization of an international stabilization force by the U.N. Security Council marks a rare moment of multilateral convergence on the need for an external guarantor of ceasefire arrangements, though the practicalities of deployment, command structures, and rules of engagement remain to be resolved.

Within Israel, reactions to the Board of Peace have been measured. While the government has welcomed U.S.-led efforts to secure reconstruction funding and international buy-in for demilitarization, there is cautious awareness of the pitfalls that accompany internationalization of security responsibilities. The memory of past international forces whose mandates proved ambiguous or whose presence failed to deter rearmament lingers in Israeli strategic thinking. Sa’ar’s role at the inaugural meeting will therefore be not merely representational but advocative, pressing for clarity on enforcement mechanisms and on the criteria by which success will be judged.

The reconstruction of Gaza, long deferred by cycles of violence, now confronts the paradox of urgency and fragility. VIN News has reported that pledges from Washington and Abu Dhabi provide a financial foundation, yet money alone cannot reconstruct political legitimacy or social trust. The Board of Peace, if it is to transcend the symbolism of its inaugural session, must articulate a credible pathway from temporary governance to a durable political order that prevents the reconstitution of militant infrastructure. The demilitarization mandate, in particular, sits at the fault line of competing visions: for Israel, it is a non-negotiable security imperative; for many Palestinians, it intersects with questions of sovereignty and political representation.

As Sa’ar prepares to enter the boardroom in Washington, the weight of these unresolved tensions will be palpable. The VIN News report portrayed the meeting as a crucible in which the lofty abstractions of peace plans confront the granular realities of postwar administration. The Board of Peace, for all its ambition, begins its life under the scrutiny of a world weary of grand frameworks that falter in execution. Whether it can translate pledges into projects, mandates into mechanisms, and ceasefires into sustained stability remains an open question.

In the final analysis, Israel’s participation through Sa’ar signals a cautious willingness to test the promise of a new diplomatic architecture. This engagement does not imply uncritical endorsement but reflects a recognition that Gaza’s future will be shaped not only by Israeli policy but by an evolving constellation of international actors. The inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace thus stands as a moment of provisional hope, freighted with skepticism yet animated by the possibility that, after years of devastation, a more coordinated approach to reconstruction and demilitarization might finally take root.