Behind the Strange “Board of Peace” in Charge of Gaza

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Jared Kushner and a web of private equity billionaires with ties to Israel and shadowy corporate armies stand to profit off never-ending conflict. Gaza is the testing ground.

Reposted from More Perfect Union’s Youtube, August 6, 2026

*Transcript*

For nearly three years, we watched a livestreamed genocide unfold in Gaza. But on the world stage, a very different vision was being shared.

[Jared Kushner] Peace is a different deal than a business deal. New Gaza. It could be a hope. It could be a destination, have a lot of industry, 100% full employment and opportunity for everybody there. And if everyone thinks it’s impossible, that’s even more reason why you should aim for it.

[Salwa Shameem] Billion-dollar pledges followed. Powerful leaders signed on. Even FIFA pledged $50 million for a new Gaza football stadium. And in July, President Trump’s Board of Peace announced a tentative peace agreement for Gaza. But that’s where things start to get murky. There’s a World Bank fund that was supposed to hold billions for Gaza’s reconstruction. The balance? Zero. And at least some of the money that was supposed to go to the fund? Diverted into a private JPMorgan account.

It’s not clear who controls the account, why it exists or how the funds are being used. So I did what we always do. I followed the networks of money and I took a closer look at the men inside the board. I spoke with insiders, including an ex-Blackwater mercenary.

[Morgan Lerette] I joined Blackwater because I wanted to make money and I wanted my adventure.

[Salwa] The deeper I went, the more unsettling the picture became. Because Gaza doesn’t just look like a place to be rebuilt. It looks like a testing ground for a new kind of control. And it could just be the start. To understand how we got here, we need to start in the one room that was supposed to stop the suffering. Inside the U.N. Security Council, resolution after resolution is brought to the table calling for ceasefires, aid corridors and a Palestinian state.

And each time this happens… Those against?

[in Spanish] Those against?

[Salwa] So when the U.S. offers a new way to bring peace to Gaza through the Board of Peace, the council immediately approves it. You might be thinking, why? In a generous read of the situation, the U.N. might have thought the U.S. could finally put some kind of pressure on Israel. But when I sat down with journalist Casey Michel, he had a much more cynical take.

[Casey Michel] I think this was a low-cost way for other members of the United Nations Security Council to get in President Trump’s good graces and to offload something that had been an extremely thorny issue elsewhere.

[Salwa] Whichever way you want to read it, the U.N. makes a huge mistake. It greenlights the board without seeing its most important document—the Board of Peace Charter, which is revealed two months later. First, membership is invite-only for countries and individuals. For countries, $1 billion is the price tag for a long-term seat. Palestinians have no real decision-making power, but Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are invited to join as a member state.

Second, Trump is made lifetime chairman of the board unless he resigns and names a successor. Which means even after he’s no longer president, Trump keeps that role as a private citizen.

Third, the board can open private bank accounts that are harder to track or scrutinize, like the JPMorgan account I mentioned earlier. And finally, Gaza—the original purpose of this whole initiative— is never mentioned in the charter. Instead, the board’s mandate is expanded to any place “threatened by conflict.” So, meaning…anywhere?

It’s easy to not take the Board of Peace seriously at face value, but a say over which conflicts matter and how billions in reconstruction money can be used, are massive levers of global power. To understand how that power might be used, we need to take a closer look at three men.

[President Donald Trump] We’re making Jared an envoy of peace. A very smart guy.

[Salwa] Like Jared Kushner, founding executive board member who is tasked with brokering high-stakes peace deals. Yet when you track his post-White House moves, it leads you to private equity plays, foreign funding and investments tied to the same regions he’s now meant to mediate conflicts for.

[Casey] Almost immediately after Donald Trump leaves the White House in early 2021, Jared Kushner is looking for new ways to monetize his relationships that he developed in the White House. He and a number of others start something called Affinity Partners, which is a brand new private investment fund that also immediately opens itself up to foreign financing from around the world.

They go to Saudi Arabia, they go to Qatar, they go to the United Arab Emirates, and the next thing they know, they have billions of dollars flowing in for this fund. With that foreign money behind it, Affinity goes on to buy the largest stake in a firm called Phoenix Financial. Phoenix is an Israeli insurance firm known for investing in companies with links to illegal settlement activity and expansion.

[Casey] It’s not insuring just little mom and pop stores or providing health insurance in Israel. It is providing the insurance for the basic infrastructure for these settlements that are being created with, of course, Israeli backing. Jared Kushner, who again is worth repeating, is the son-in-law of the sitting American president, has every financial incentive to push for policies that benefit Israel without any buy-in, without any incentives for the Palestinian voices on the ground to be heard.

[Salwa] Affinity’s investment in Phoenix raises serious questions about what it means to be both a special envoy for peace and also hold investments in the Middle East, namely Israel. But beyond Kushner, there are two other Board of Peace members to know. First, Marc Rowan, whose Apollo Global Management is also connected to Phoenix Financial. Phoenix and Apollo have a standing deal where Phoenix can join Apollo’s investments in Israel, up to a total of $2 billion.

[Marc Rowan] The potential here is tremendous: The coastline alone—$50 billion of value on a conservative basis. The housing stock—more than $30 billion as rebuilt. The infrastructure—more than $30 billion. $115 billion of value. It just needs to be unlocked and financed.

[Salwa] Then there’s Steve Witkoff, a Trump ally and also a special envoy of peace, whose family firm, the Witkoff Group, has also done major deals with Rowan’s Apollo. Through the Witkoff Group and a crypto venture co-founded with the Trump family, the Witkoff family’s finances are deeply entangled with the same Gulf states he’s negotiating peace deals with. Witkoff claims he’s divested from both, but he hasn’t fully separated from the family firm, and his sons still run the companies.

[Casey] Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome. If you see where the incentive structures lie, almost every single time you can see what the outcomes are going to be.

[Salwa] There’s no evidence that Kushner, Rowan or Witkoff have formalized any deals through the Board of Peace, but the incentives here are striking. On top of that, the glossy private-equity-style vision set out by Kushner, Witkoff, Rowan and the other Board of Peace power brokers has another obvious problem.

[Casey] It looked like something that was plucked out of a sci-fi novel that has absolutely nothing to do with what’s happening on the ground.

[Salwa] So how do you go from this to that? Well, you don’t. At least not yet. Because just a few weeks ago, the Board of Peace cut back their sweeping Gaza plan. And instead, it’s narrowed that blueprint to a pilot camp near Rafah: portable cabins for tens of thousands of vetted civilians, run by a police force and an international stabilization unit.

It looks less like a reconstruction transformation and more like a controlled experiment. And whether the promise is a grand, sci-fi vision of “New Gaza” or a single contained pilot project, there’s a whole second layer of players who stand to win big from carrying out these plans on the ground.

So I traveled to Arizona to speak with an insider who gave me a rare look into the secretive world of private military contractors.

My name is Morgan Lerette. I was enlisted in the Air Force, and then I worked for Blackwater in Iraq for 18 months in 2004, 2005. The former contractors aren’t big fans of me, I’ll tell you that. But at the end of the day, Blackwater really gave me the opportunity to one, make a crap ton of money. That was always number one for me.

And two, go and get that that war adventure that I had been training for and been wanting, you know, as a military member for so long. Blackwater was a private corporate army hired by the U.S. to fight and provide security during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They’re basically your modern day rent-a-army.

[TV] It may very well be one of the most controversial companies in our country’s history. A kind of shadowy army in the war on terror, a privately owned and heavily armed force.

[Salwa] And what’s on the table for private contractors going into these places? What’s on the table is essentially money.

You’re going to make more money for the same amount of risk that you had already done before in the military. But private security contractors don’t operate under standard military laws and regulations.

[TV] It was one of the worst killings of innocent civilians by U.S. contractors in Iraq. The accusations of indiscriminate shootings by Blackwater guards…of more than 30 unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad. 17 of them died, including a 9-year-old boy. Despite a series of controversies surrounding Blackwater, it never really disappeared.

It went through a number of corporate rebrands and ended up consolidating under a bigger security conglomerate called Constellis. The logos changed, but the basic business model didn’t. In 2024, ex-CIA officer Phil Reilly, who previously worked for Constellis, started a company called Safe Reach Solutions.

As Palestinians in Gaza starved, the Israeli government refused to lift its blockade on aid and instead created a new organization backed by the U.S., called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, that outsourced aid logistics and armed security to Safe Reach Solutions. Safe Reach Solutions then subcontracted another, smaller firm called UG Solutions. Here’s what happened.

[TV] Desperately seeking food, starving Palestinians instead are met with live ammunition and stun grenades. Witnesses say Palestinians were shot while trying to collect aid from the U.S. and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed while queuing for the food they thought would keep them alive.

A UG Solutions contractor alleges that it was the company’s contractors who fired on civilians.

UG Solutions denies his testimony.

[Morgan] You’re taking people that are military veterans and you’re putting them into a combat zone… it is going to be an absolute fiasco. This is the problem with holding private military contractors accountable is, how do you define the jurisdiction that actually governs them? It’s not the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it’s not the local laws. It really is this legal gray area that continues to be exploited. And the only people end up getting screwed by it are usually the guys on the ground.

It’s not the companies, it’s not the politicians. It’s literally the guy that was standing there and thought he was making the right decision. And the civilians on the ground, right? I mean, from a contracting point of view, I don’t care about that. Like, not to be a jerk, but at the end of the day, the rules of engagement are not the same as the military.

[Salwa] Gaza Humanitarian Foundation shut down in November of 2025. But just like Blackwater, the contractor networks behind the foundation didn’t disappear. They adapted. UG Solutions repositioned itself around the Board of Peace, branding itself as the go-to firm for the security operations in Trump’s plan. They even shared a proposal with the board.

And the company is now advertising jobs like this one in Gaza to guard crossings in Rafah and protect infrastructure.

[Morgan] Essentially, the contractor doesn’t matter because you can go in there and you could do a horrible job, and all it’s going to take is creating a new LLC over the course of 2 or 3 days, getting a couple of new people in leadership and saying, well, now I’m going to bid on that. It’s always going to be the exact same people on the background.

[Salwa] Just weeks ago, the Board of Peace planned to grant itself sweeping legal immunity in Gaza, according to a draft resolution, hoping to shield its members from arrest and prosecution. It’s unclear whether this immunity is meant to extend to international courts or cover potential claims within Gaza itself.

But Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now launching a campaign against the one court that could hold both the board and Israel accountable: the International Criminal Court.

[Marco Rubio] As we speak, the ICC and its friends are waging a war against our country, not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts and the force of so-called international law. It makes you wonder: what exactly is the board planning to do that requires immunity from the law, especially in a moment when Rubio is also attacking the ICC? I really don’t think we’ve been able to wrap our minds around the fact that this doesn’t have to remain relegated only to Gaza. It can, of course, be extended to the West Bank, but it could also be extended even further beyond.

Maybe it’s Lebanon and Syria, maybe it’s Iran, maybe it’s Ukraine. The deeper I followed the Board of Peace’s networks of influence, the more I kept landing in the same unsettling place: a system that normalizes a market for endless conflict. One where every phase of war becomes a financial opportunity.

Weapons sales to Israel raze and destroy homes and infrastructure, making a place completely unlivable. Stabilization through private security contractors channel global capital into redevelopment.

[Morgan] War will always be a moneymaker. It’s amazing. I think history is going to repeat itself. It hasn’t yet, but it sure as heck rhymes. It’s not going to be any different than what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Salwa] So what, then, is the alternative? You cannot have peace without addressing historic wrongs, without addressing justice on the ground. So maybe you start with the most obvious problem. There are plenty of other options to pursue moving forward in terms of American policy regarding Israel, regarding Palestine, ranging from cutting off arms sales to Israel to launching new programs of sanctions, targeted sanctions against those settler—violent settler communities— in the West Bank, or presumably in Gaza.

[Salwa] The Board of Peace is one vision for Gaza’s future. The question isn’t whether this plan will bring peace to Gaza. It’s who gets to control what happens next and who pays the price for it. Because the more things change, the more it stays the same. We. Are ending the era of endless wars. You know, it used to be you go to war. To the victor belong the spoils, right?

In other words, if you Peter country, you own that country. You take the earlier we go to war. We bomb the crap out of it, and then we live. You know, it’s almost like, what are we doing? What? What’s going on?

We bombed the whole Middle East, and then we left. What did we get? We got nothing. We destroyed. I mean, we bombed the hell out of everything. You know, when they went into. When they took out Iraq for a thousand years with different names, you had Iran and Iraq, similar powers.

They were the two big ones. And for a thousand years, they would fight each other this way, this way, this way. Then the rest. This way. This. Then they’d rest. They were the self-check. Then one day we go in and bomb the hell out of one. We destroy one. And then all of a sudden, Iran has the whole Middle East to itself. All of its criminality. Certainly all its corruption.

And of course, what that’s meant for those in places like the West Bank and Gaza. I doubt we will see that from the. I really don’t think we’ve been able to wrap our minds around the fact that this doesn’t have to remain relegated only to Gaza. This is sick.

And of course, we extended to the West Bank, but it could also be extended even further beyond maybe it’s Lebanon and Syria, maybe it’s Iran, maybe it’s Ukraine, maybe it’s Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Security personnel working for the company, then called the Blackwater, opened fire at Baghdad’s Nisour Square, killing more than a dozen. 17 Iraqi civilians were killed when Blackwater contractors opened fire in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.

At least 11 people died, including a nine year old boy. A handful of Blackwater contractors were charged with manslaughter. In court papers, the government has alleged the guards opened fire with automatic weapons and grenade launchers on unarmed civilians at this.

Thank you.

Steve and I have to say, one of the great honors for me of being able to work on this has been working with Steve, who really is as brilliant as he is. His heart is is tremendous.

 

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