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Former UK prime minister\u2019s role on Trump-led Gaza oversight committee expected to spur widespread condemnation.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n President Donald Trump has named former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his so-called \u201cBoard of Peace\u201c, which is expected to oversee the United States president\u2019s 20-point plan to end Israel\u2019s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p>\n The White House said on Friday that Blair would be among the board\u2019s founding executive members, alongside Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The other members are Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; World Bank Group President Ajay Banga, and Robert Gabriel, a US deputy national security adviser.<\/p>\n The board members \u201cwill oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza\u2019s stabilization and long-term success\u201d, the White House said, including \u201cgovernance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization\u201d.<\/p>\n Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov will serve as the High Representative for Gaza, according to the statement.<\/p>\n The announcement also named members of a Gaza Executive Board, aimed at supporting governance and services in Gaza. Blair, Kushner and Witkoff were also named to the board, along with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Qatari diplomat Ali Al Thawadi and others.<\/p>\n The announcement comes just days after Witkoff announced the launch of the second phase of the US-brokered plan to end Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 71,000 Palestinians since October 2023.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has said Trump\u2019s plan is \u201cmoving from ceasefire to demilitarization, technocratic governance, and reconstruction\u201d.<\/p>\n But Palestinians have questioned what that will mean in practice, as Israel continues to carry out deadly attacks across the coastal enclave and restrict deliveries of humanitarian aid, in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire deal that came into effect in October.<\/p>\n A 10-year-old girl, a 16-year-old boy and an elderly woman were killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Friday, as members of a planned Palestinian technocratic committee sat down for the first time in Cairo to prepare for the rollout of phase two of Trump\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n In Friday\u2019s statement, the White House confirmed that Ali Shaath would lead the technocratic committee, which is expected to handle day-to-day governance in Gaza in lieu of Hamas.<\/p>\n The Palestinian group had previously said it was ready to abandon its governing duties in the enclave as outlined under the Trump plan.<\/p>\n There was no immediate response from Hamas and other Palestinian political factions to the makeup of the Board of Peace\u2019s executive board.<\/p>\n The participation of Blair, who served as British prime minister from 1997 to 2007, has been a major point of contention, after his name was floated as a possible candidate months ago.<\/p>\n The former United Kingdom Labour Party leader strongly supported the US-led so-called \u201cwar on terror\u201d in the early 2000s, and joined then-US President George W Bush\u2019s 2003 invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law and another newly-named executive board member, is also a staunch supporter of Israel who previously suggested that Palestinians are incapable of self-governance.<\/p>\n Kushner\u2019s family also has strong ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.<\/p>\n In 2024, Kushner underscored that Gaza has \u201cvery valuable\u201d waterfront property, saying that Israel should \u201cmove the people out and then clean it up\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Former UK prime minister\u2019s role on Trump-led Gaza oversight committee expected to spur widespread condemnation. President Donald Trump has named former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to his so-called \u201cBoard of Peace\u201c, which is expected to oversee the United States president\u2019s 20-point plan to end Israel\u2019s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. The White House […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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