By Thierry Meyssan
Voltairenet.org
February 26, 2026
President Trump convened his Peace Council for its first session in Washington. Some media outlets, published in states that did not participate, suggested that this Council would replace the UN. Not at all. This new body is an attempt to salvage what can be saved of US influence, much like the collapsing USSR created the Commonwealth of Independent States. Washington wants "peace through reconstruction" in Gaza so as not to leave the region in disarray when it completely separates from Israel.
President Donald Trump convened his "Gaza Peace Council" for the first time in Washington on February 19, 2026.
The choice of date corresponds to the 365th day of his second term; a way of highlighting how he wishes to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that is, with foreign support.
February 19th is also the start of Ramadan, at least for some Muslims, since Saudi Arabia had set it the day before. For believers, Ramadan is a sacred period of introspection and charity.
The venue for the meeting was equally symbolic: the US Institute of Peace (USIP), now renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Far from being just another example of President Trump's systemic arrogance, this name change illustrates the organization's shift in focus. This institute was created by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, at the same time as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The press has reported, albeit very incompletely, on the workings of the NED, but never on those of the USIP. The former orchestrated color revolutions by publicly funding foreign organizations chosen by the CIA, while the latter developed plans for the Pentagon. It's worth noting that both the NED and the USIP were funded by Congress through the State and War Department budget lines, even though they were independent of the federal government. Both were directly under the Five Eyes, the military alliance of the Atlantic Charter (1941), involving Australia, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. In my book, Before Our Eyes, I recounted how the USIP determined the area in which the Pentagon established Daesh, the Islamic State.
By creating the Peace Council, President Trump intended to put an end to the Rumsfeld-Cebrowski strategy of using proxies to reshape the wider Middle East [1]. He also recognized the ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the need to create other structures to address its shortcomings.
Many voices have also expressed concern that this Council could replace the United Nations. However, President Trump is well aware that Russia and China are very committed to this international law body. Indeed, the two superpowers declined the invitation to participate in the Council, which they are closely monitoring.
President Trump also stated that the Council would "oversee" the work of the UN (sic) [2]
At the start of the session, he had the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents applauded, and they greeted each other and shook hands after 32 years of conflict. He acknowledged the presence of the Albanian Prime Minister and the Malaysian "president" (there is no president in Malaysia, but a king and his prime minister). He also showed friendliness to the Hungarian Prime Minister, whose candidacy he promoted on the eve of the April 12 elections. He welcomed the Argentine president, the Japanese Prime Minister, the Emir of Bahrain, the Cambodian and Egyptian Prime Ministers, and the Kazakh and Kosovar presidents. He emphasized that the Pakistani Prime Minister and his field marshal had ended the war with India. He greeted the "presidents" of Paraguay and Qatar-before changing his mind with the Emir of Qatar-the Romanian Prime Minister, and the Uzbek and Vietnamese presidents. All this amidst utter chaos. He did not name the Emirati Deputy Prime Minister, nor the foreign ministers of Morocco, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and... Israel.
States governed by politicians who share President Trump's views, or who are aligned with the United States, joined the Peace Council. Others, seeking to curry favor with President Trump, also registered. Italy, Germany, and the European Union participated as observers. In this regard, France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia, and Portugal pointed out that Croatian Dubravka Šuica, the European Commissioner for the Mediterranean, had no mandate to participate in this Council and that the European Commission had sent her in violation of European treaties.
Besides Dubravka Šuica, Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian Prime Minister, and Nicușor Dan, the Romanian President, along with senior diplomats from Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Slovakia, were the only Europeans present at the meeting. The European Commission defended itself by asserting that Ursula von der Leyen had received an invitation and had chosen to be represented so that the Union would be associated with the defense of the Palestinian population, of which it is the main donor. However, Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Foreign Minister, pointed out that, in that case, she should have sent a senior civil servant, not a Commissioner. To maintain contact with this Peace Council, the foreign ministers of the Union will host a luncheon, on an unspecified date, with Bulgarian Nickolai Mladenov, former UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, and new high representative of the Peace Council for Gaza.
During the first session, President Trump stated that several countries, mostly from the Gulf, had pledged "more than $7 billion" (€5.9 billion) to rebuild the devastated Palestinian territory. He presented this donation as an effective form of combating terrorism (meaning against Hamas). He also announced a $10 billion (€8.5 billion) US contribution to the broader Peace Council. Speaking as if he were attending a social gathering, he thanked members of his administration in the same manner as he had thanked foreign heads of state and government; all of them, in effect, being on the same level. Finally, he made a brief mention of his wife's cinematic success.
Michael Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, summarized the achievements of the past 13 weeks: each week, 4,200 trucks of humanitarian aid entered the country and were distributed to all 2.1 million Gazans, with the participation of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Jordan, and UN agencies. Aid diverted to other destinations is now less than 1%. The drinking water problem, while not entirely resolved, is on the verge of being so. All signs of famine or food shortages have disappeared.
Ali Shaath, chairman of the national committee for the administration of Gaza, thanked the Peace Council for Gaza, on behalf of the United Nations Security Council, for the clear mandate given to him.
General Jasper Jeffers, commander of special operations, announced the formation of a 12,000-strong police force and a 20,000-strong stabilization force. Its first 5,000 troops will be Albanian, Indonesian, Kazakh, Kosovar, and Moroccan, while the police will be trained by their Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts. It is known that a military base will be built by the United States in Gaza to house the initial forces [3].
Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the former colonial power and "George Bush's lapdog," announced that President Trump's plan should give rise to a tolerant Gaza. If he hadn't lied so much during his career, one might have believed that the United Kingdom had abandoned its "divide and rule" policy and now accepted that Jews and Arabs belonged to the same country.
Ajay Banga, director of the World Bank, assured that his organization would control all spending during the reconstruction of Gaza.
A public service announcement was then shown. It recounted the story of President Trump's intervention during the Israeli crackdown in Gaza: the hostages were freed, the violence decreased by 99%, a new government was established in Gaza. Within three years, hundreds of thousands of new homes would be built and public education and healthcare services would be restored. Within ten years, the Gaza Strip would once again be a safe and prosperous region.
Following the speeches, a second promotional film was shown, this time by the president of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA). It depicted a Gaza covered in football stadiums where the division of the population had given way to the unity of the sports teams.
The session ended with the signing of the statutes by the members and the tapping of the gavel by President Trump.
He conceives of his actions in Gaza as a definitive settlement. He no longer intends to allow Israel to play any role in the enclave. He himself announced to Benjamin Netanyahu, the "revisionist Zionist" Prime Minister of Israel, that Washington could no longer provide military support to Israel and that Tel Aviv must achieve financial independence within ten years at the latest. Since this announcement on September 30, 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified his contacts in Washington, but has obtained nothing decisive. The United States continues to supply Tel Aviv with weapons, but no longer consults it on its strategy. This is why Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to transform Israel into a Super-Sparta [4].
US allies opposed to MAGA ideology mistakenly interpreted the creation of the Peace Council as a desire to dismantle the United Nations. They then acknowledged that President Trump intended to use this new body to achieve what he could not with the UN, but without destroying it. It could be something else entirely: President Trump is aware that the United States has little chance of surviving the "American Empire," just as the USSR did not survive the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. By creating the Peace Council, he is forging a new type of alliance that costs the United States nothing and that could outlast the dissolution of NATO and the end of US sovereignty over Israel. Mikhail Gorbachev, too, believed he could save the Soviet Union by creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
-
[1 ] " The Rumsfeld/Cebrowski doctrine ", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, May 25, 2021.
[2 ] See the full video of the meeting on Cspan.
[3 ] " Trump officials plan to build 5,000-person military base in Gaza, files show ", Aram Roston & Cate Brown, The Guardian, February 19, 2026.
[4 ] " After"Greater Israel", Netanyahu argues for a"Super-Sparta"and"finish the job in Gaza"", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, September 30, 2025.
You may freely reproduce articles from the Voltaire Network provided you cite the source and do not modify them or use them for commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-ND license).