It seems nearly impossible for a multilateral board to secure peace in Gaza. Peace cannot be engineered solely through international consensus or technocratic governance. It requires political legitimacy, local ownership and a willingness to engage in uncomfortable realities. The international actors’ efforts should be directed toward facilitating inclusive Palestinian dialogue, supporting intra-Palestinian reconciliation, demanding Israel’s accountability for war crimes and addressing the structural conditions that perpetuate instability rather than investing in a multilateral board designed to bypass Gaza’s political actors. This would involve difficult choices, including engagement with actors currently deemed unacceptable and confronting the constraints imposed by occupation.

The Board of Peace is framed as a pragmatic solution to prevent further violence and humanitarian collapse, such a mechanism is often presented as neutral, technical and temporary. Yet beneath this framing lies a critical flaw, i.e., a multilateral board cannot secure peace in Gaza if it excludes Gaza’s own representatives and is shaped primarily by the absence of other major powers. However, the inclusion of other P4 could have made it a geopolitical chessboard, competing for their own geopolitical interests but keeping in mind Trump’s transactional nature and crackdown on global funding by the U.S. peace seems hard nut to crack in Gaza.

The board of Peace in its essence, is designed to offer preventive diplomacy and supervise post-war reconstruction and tasked with resolving humanitarian issues in Gaza. The BoP was envisioned to investigate disputes, mediate between both parties (Israel and Palestine) and recommend peaceful solutions before conflicts escalated into war. Unlike the Trusteeship Council, which managed territories to get them independence or helped them achieving their right to self-determination. The BoP’s role was conflict prevention and peace maintenance, operating in an advisory and diplomatic capacity. The appeal of a multilateral board is understandable. Gaza is devastated, its infrastructure in ruins, and its population facing unprecedented humanitarian suffering. However, Gaza’s situation is fundamentally different, both politically and structurally.

At its core, Gaza is not merely a post-conflict territory in need of administration; it is part of an unresolved political struggle rooted in occupation, displacement and denied self-determination. Any governance or security arrangement that treats Gaza as a technical problem to be managed, rather than a political entity whose people possess agency, is unlikely to produce lasting peace. Excluding Gaza’s own political representatives regardless of how controversial they may be internationally undermined the very foundation of legitimacy on which peace and stability depend.

A central weakness of the multilateral board proposal is its implicit assumption that local representation is either undesirable or dispensable. In practice, this often translates into the deliberate exclusion of Hamas and other locally rooted actors. The international actors view Hamas solely through a security lens, it remains a major stakeholder with deep political, social and organizational presence in Gaza. Ignoring this reality does not neutralize its influence instead, it creates a governance vacuum that external actors are ill-equipped to fill. History repeatedly shows that peace arrangements imposed through internationally backed regimes or without engaging those who hold real power on the ground, tend to collapse once external oversight diminishes – Afghanistan is a prime case study.

Israel’s role further complicates the feasibility of this proposal. As the occupying power under international law, Israel exercises decisive control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, maritime access and flow of goods. Any multilateral board that operates without addressing these structural constraints risks becoming an administrator of blockade rather than a guarantor of peace. Without the authority to challenge restrictions on movement, reconstruction materials and economic activity, the board’s ability to stabilize Gaza would remain severely limited. Security, in this context, would amount to containment rather than peace. For instance, Israel has recently opened Rafah border crossing for movements of Gazans but with certain limitations.

Israel’s accountability is another critical concern. The war atrocities on Israel’s part are neither forgotten nor be foregone by Gazans. Their hearts have shattered into pieces with the loss of their loved ones. They are living with unimaginable grievances and occupation around themselves.  But the need of the hour also demands an end to war, an end to humanitarian crisis over there. The urgency of Gaza’s humanitarian crisis leaves little room for political idealism. Managing Gaza through an external mechanism may reduce violence temporarily, but it does not address the underlying drivers of conflict. Without a credible political horizon that recognizes Palestinian agency and rights, any security arrangement is likely to remain fragile.

The question is not whether the international community should be involved in Gaza, it must be but how. A multilateral board that excludes Gaza’s representatives and operates under the directives of one big power, without addressing the root level grievances, cannot deliver genuine peace. At best, it may manage the crisis; at worst, it risks entrenching external control and postponing a political solution. Peace in Gaza cannot be imposed from above. It must emerge from political inclusion, accountability and recognition of the people of Gaza as active stakeholders in their own future.