Well, hello--
What a week it has been-- in international affairs, in domestic affairs here in the United States, and for the millions of our fellow humans in Iran and in Gaza who today face intense threats from Pres.Trump and his Israeli sidekicks.
On Thursday, at the annual big-capital conclave in Davos, Switzerland, Trump launched a new, very chaotic world body called-- misleadingly-- the "Board of Peace" that clearly seems intended to replace the United Nations, the world's pre-eminent governance body since 1945. (Meantime, Israel continued its outrageous attacks on UN bodies that have worked in Israeli-controlled areas since 1948. On January 20, Israeli forces even occupied and razed to the ground the Jerusalem HQ of the UN's body providing relief to Palestinian refugees.)
The map above shows in red which countries, as of yesterday, had agreed to join Trump's "Board of Peace." Click on it to enlarge. I took it from this Wikipedia page, which gives many details about how the BoP is supposed to operate.
The Charter of this body is markedly different from that of the "Board of Peace" that the UN Security Council (to its shame) adopted in full in its Resolution 2803 of November 17, 2025. While Resolution 2803 was focused exclusively on Gaza, the Charter of the Davos BoP (full text here) makes no mention of Gaza at all, but has a seemingly global remit.
This Charter also states that "Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural Chairman of the Board of Peace", and "Replacement of the Chairman may occur only following voluntary resignation or as a result of incapacity, as determined by a unanimous vote of the Executive Board"... with that latter body being selected by-- you guessed it!-- "the Chairman" and removable only by him.
Even the writers of "Monty Python" could not have invented this.
![]() Then, soon after Trump rolled out the "Board of Peace", his son-in-law Jared Kushner took to the stage in Davos to announce the roll-out, under the auspices of the BoP, of the truly grotesque plan he has hatched for the "rebuilding" of Gaza.
![]() This plan envisages building eight new population-concentration zones within Gaza (which has already functioned since 1948 as a site for concentrating Palestinians ethnically cleansed from the lands that became "Israel" that year.) Kushner's concentration zones would be squeezed between a Trump-Riviera-style "tourism zone" along the coast and a sweatshop-style "industrial zone" along Gaza's armistice line with Israel (which , lest we forget, is not an international border.)
Click on either of those images to enlarge. Find more slides from Kushner's presentation here.
Two more developments related to the roll-out of the Kushner plan:
![]() As part of it, he referred to the involvement in it of something called the "National Council for the Administration of Gaza", a technocratic, all-Palestinian body the Egyptian government has painstakingly pulled together to administer the Strip. But the slide with which Kushner introduced this Council was headed by a collection of Arabic-language letters presented back to front and hilariously illegible!![]() Much more tragically, on January 21 a relief body affiliated with the Egyptian government had commissioned three photographers to go to Middle Gaza to document the challenges that future Egyptian relief efforts might face there. And the Israeli military snuffed them all out-- on a day in which they also killed another eight civilians in Gaza.
One final note on the Egypt-backed "National Council": This line-up of Palestinian technocrats has been endorsed by all the Palestinian factions, including Hamas. Read a good survey of who its members are, here, on Mondoweiss.
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My own judgment is that none of this talk about "rebuilding Gaza" will get anywhere until the leaders of the U.S.-Israeli Axis are prepared to engage in serious negotiations with the Palestinian Resistance factions over how to truly restore peace to Gaza. For more than 27 months the Israeli military has been-- with the near-total support of the United States-- doing everything in its very considerable power to vanquish the Resistance in Gaza. And that has included inflicting mass killings and starvation on the Palestinians of Gaza and undertaking other equally genocidal actions to strip them of dignity and the possibility of a decent/coherent life.
But despite those long months of truly genocidal assault, the Israeli military has been unable to push the Resistance into submission. What other forces are there anywhere in the world that are willing and able to try to succeed where Israel's much-vaunted military has so clearly failed?
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Trump shifts attention to Iran-- and whole world?
This was certainly an eventful Davos conference for the otherwise creaky "World Economic Forum." It was the third time Trump had attended as president. But it was his first gig there during this presidential term, and it was one that he and his uber-rich band of broligarchs had clearly been planning for, for a while.
The week started with him in full "I want Greenland and to heck with the Europeans!" mode. The Europeans showed a little bit of spine and he agreed to some kind of a compromise on Greenland. Then on Thursday he rolled out his world-encompassing "Board of Peace." The Europeans-- who since the UN's inception have been strong supporters of the body, as well as enjoying a disproportionate number of executive positions in UN bodies-- showed they still had some spine: large numbers of them declined Trump's invitation to join the BoP. (For his part, UN Secretary-General António Guterres notably gave no comment on the matter, leaving his spokesman Rolando Gomez to specify only that the UN's involvement with it would be "only in the context of Resolution 2803.")
By week's end, Trump had shifted his (intentionally mercurial) attention back to Iran. Late Thursday evening-- just eight days after his big January 14 backdown from his earlier promise to send U.S. military support to anti-government protesters there-- he was once again increasing the pressure against the government in Tehran.
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“We’re watching Iran,” he told reporters on Air Force One as he returned to the United States from Davos. “We have a big flotilla going in that direction, and we’ll see what happens.” He also described the large naval force he had ordered to deploy to the Gulf region as an “armada.”
The Iranian leaders have also, understandably, been watching Trump. Earlier today IRGC Deputy Commander Brig.-Gen Ahmad Vahidi told units in the northwestern city of Urmia that, " We are ready to deliver a regret-inducing response to any reckless action by the sworn enemies of the Iranian nation."
![]() Also today, Iranian defense ministry spokesman Brig.-Gen. Reza Talaei-Nik said that, “The quantitative and qualitative capacities of Iran's missile power have increased compared to the imposed 12-day war [of last June], and the country's missile defense capability has been strengthened and become more effective thanks to the experiences gained in the war.”
Here in the United States, several commentators have been warning about the imminent possibility of a new U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. For my part, I still stick by the analysis I shared here on January 16, and the conclusion I reach there that the U.S.-Israeli Axis is unlikely to initiate any such assault. I sure hope I called that one right.
Of course, even if Tehran is able successfully to deter the U.S.-Israeli Axis from initiating an assault, that still leaves open the possibility of a new war starting as a result of miscommunications or misunderstandings. And it does nothing, on its own, to end the huge suffering that decades of U.S. sanctions have deliberately inflicted on Iran's 92 million people.
(On Thursday, on Globalities.org, I published a short review of the effects that Washington's decades-long use-- nearly always illegitimate--unilateral economic sanctions has had on populations around the world. My conclusion? That by deliberately attacking or threatening to attack noncombatant persons in a struggle for political objectives, these sanctions fit the classic definition of “terrorism.”)
Trump's actions at the global level
At Davos early in the week, Canada's PM Mark Carney gave a forceful speech in which he warned that Trump's actions on Greenland, tariffs, and other issues marked a clear "rupture" in the post-WW2 world order. (Yes, that's the same Mark Carney who-- like most of the West European leaders-- has given continued, though generally quiet, support to Israel's clearly genocidal actions in Gaza.) But his warning about Trump as a figure of "rupture" struck a wide chord in much of the Western commentatoriat. And it got me to pondering just how deep the Trump rupture actually goes.
It's relatively easy to say that it marks a break from-- and challenge to-- the basic principles of the UN Charter. But I think it goes much deeper than that. Indeed, it's a challenge to a broad range of the norms and conventions that have marked international life for the last 200-- or even 400-- years.
Back in late November, shortly after the UN Security Council's disastrous adoption of resolution 2801, I penned this essay, which explored the question "As the UN crumbles, what?" At the time, I didn't even entertain the idea that it might be the UN's own misbegotten step-child the "Board of Peace" that would speedily become the first big challenger to the whole concept of the UN! In the face of this challenge, I believe the most principled thing to do is to step up our defense of the UN and all ts institutions. Especially UNRWA! (And to do this in the clear knowledge that the UN is still very far from perfect.)
But defending the UN would be a whole lot easier and more effective if the leadership of the body itself showed some spine and some commitment to defending itself and the principles for which it stands. Let's hope that happens!
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Other quick news from Just World Ed
![]() ** Thanks to our super board member Rick Sterling we now have a much more robust and helpful list of "Further Resources" on the Learning Hub for our recent project "Venezuela in Washington's Crosshairs." Be sure to check it out!
** Board member Rami G. Khouri has two thought-provoking new pieces on his Substack this week:
- A review of Hamid Dabashi's book After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization, and
- An exploration of Pres. Trump's relationship with Israeli PM Netanyahu.
** Board member Prof. Richard Falk will be speaking on this webinar on "World Order After Viet Nam" this coming Monday, January 26, starting at 7 pm ET.
So much to think about, and plan for, in these days of rapid change!
You stay well--
~ Helena
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And P.S. don't forget this great late-2024 book from Just World Ed, if you haven't read it yet:
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