Whatever Happened to the Board of Peace?
Headline in the June 30 Cyprus Mail newspaper: “Unclear if the Board of Peace meeting went ahead in Limassol.” After several weeks of releases announcing an important upcoming meeting of President Trump’s Board of Peace scheduled for June 30 in Cyprus, an article in the Cyprus Mail reports that it “was not possible on Tuesday to verify whether the Board of Peace (BoP) had in fact come together on the island.” Among the stories on the expected meeting, Politico declared that the meeting would convene to “readjust its strategy.” A meeting scheduled between Board member Tony Blair and Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides was cancelled when Blair’s flight was delayed.
The BoP, unveiled with much hype by President Trump, to draft a plan to “alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza” and rebuild its bombed out housing along the rubble-strewn streets of Gaza, is off to an inauspicious start. While Trump announced that at least 16 nations had joined, so far the only confirmed members are Vietnam, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Argentina, Morocco, Belarus, Bahrain and the UAE. And the total amount of funds contributed, out of the $71 billion estimated to be needed for the reconstruction, 0—ZERO—has been deposited thus far.
