Trump Names Blair, Rubio to Gaza Reconstruction 'Board of Peace'

Great-power trusteeship over Palestinian land is hardly new: the 1920 San Remo mandate placed Gaza under British control until 1948, and the U.S-run Coalition Provisional Authority tried a similar externally directed state-building experiment in Iraq in 2003-04—both faced local legitimacy crises. Today’s board reflects a century-long pattern of outside powers using financial leverage and security guarantees to reshape disputed territories (Bosnia’s OHR after 1995, Kosovo’s UNMIK in 1999, Afghanistan’s SRSG structures after 2001). Whether this incarnation endures will hinge on legitimacy: without elected Palestinian voices, the structure risks being remembered as another top-down trusteeship rather than the birth of self-rule. On a 100-year horizon the episode matters less for the personalities than for what it says about the durability of post-Ottoman, externally managed governance models in the Middle East—and for the precedent it sets for how major powers may try to pacify and rebuild war-shattered enclaves elsewhere.