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Muriel Asseburg
Senior Fellow, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
The EU and its member states should definitely join the board of peace—despite its problematic neocolonial setup and the many weaknesses of U.S. President Donald Trump’s twenty point plan. Only when the union gets involved will it have the chance to impact crucial decisionmaking about the path forward, rather than paying into an endeavor that others shape.
This is even more important as the peace plan risks cementing the occupation and blockade of Gaza in a new guise, and entrenching the split between it and the West Bank. Europeans should help spell out the provisions that will decide whether the plan can work: the sequencing of Israeli withdrawals, a solid disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration process, the mandate of an international stabilization force, the establishment of an independent monitoring and conflict resolution mechanism, the approach to reconstruction, and a political horizon that realizes the self-determination of both peoples.
In doing so, Europeans should aim to strengthen Palestinian ownership by empowering the non-partisan technocratic committee and aligning reconstruction with local needs. They should also promote free movement and access—a precondition for sustainable economic development—and a political horizon for conflict resolution. The latter also requires that Israeli measures threatening the Palestinian Authority and further escalation in the West Bank be addressed. What is more, reform of the authority should aim, first and foremost, at making leadership representative, legitimate, and accountable rather than imposing limitations on its foreign policy.
Muhammad Shehada
Visiting Fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations
Israel’s political mainstream has coalesced around permanent occupation because the cost of doing so is low or even nonexistent. Trump’s board of peace risks becoming a new platform for legitimizing that calculus; a branding opportunity and impunity wrapped in process. The U.S. president’s instinct for deals over justice could yield a Potemkin peace, entrenching apartheid and burying the two-state solution.
That is why Europe must demand a seat. Not to rubber-stamp a flawed process, but to inject hard choices. If Netanyahu wants normalization, he must choose: settlements or sanctions relief, annexation or economic integration. Backing down from exerting more pressure now would reward the prime minister’s most violent instincts, greenlighting the belief that the Gaza genocide can be followed by international amnesia.
This is not about symbolic engagement. It’s about creating real dilemmas for Israeli leadership and changing the incentive structure for its public. If the EU stays out, it forfeits leverage at the very moment a political price must be imposed. The only way to steer Trump’s erratic diplomacy back toward international law is to be in the room, shaping red lines and stopping a whitewash.
Don’t reward Netanyahu with silence. Get in the room and force the questions Israeli leaders would rather ignore.
Martin Konečný
Director, European Middle East Project
The EU should seek influence in the whole process without waiting for a seat on the proposed board of peace. Creating the institution has not seemed to be the top priority for the United States so far, and may not be the key entry point for shaping outcomes.
Brussels should engage Washington irrespective of the board and try to address the glaring gaps and imbalances in Trump’s twenty point plan. It should leverage its financial aid, its security missions—the EU Border Assistance Mission between Gaza and Egypt (EUBAM Rafah) and the EU Mission for the Support of Palestinian Police and Rule of Law (EUPOL COPPS)—and work with the prospective Palestinian technocratic committee. It should back the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) as the agency most established and capable of supporting Gaza’s tormented population, alongside international NGOs that risk being forced out by Israel’s restrictions. And it should be prepared to apply more pressure if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again undermines the ceasefire.
As for the board itself, there are huge uncertainties. A seat could allow the EU to influence the process, keep Trump engaged, coordinate with other actors, and push things in a better direction. It could equally end up legitimizing a U.S.-led quasi-colonial scheme that keeps Gaza territorially split and uninhabitable while subjecting European financial aid to the United States’ priorities. Brussels should explore membership but be clear-eyed about the flaws and risks in the U.S. approach and Trump’s unpredictability.
Zaha Hassan
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Trump’s board of peace needs the EU more than the EU needs it. Unless the union and its member states, along with regional stakeholders, are able to leverage their collective weight as potential funders and guarantors of the second phase of the twenty point plan, to make it consistent with normative frameworks of conflict resolution, they should steer clear and let it go the way of Trump’s failed 2020 “Peace to Prosperity” initiative.
The board, as envisaged in the terms of the plan and overseen by Trump, would function as a proxy for Israeli military administration over Gaza, allowing it to claim that the occupation is over while maintaining security control and restrictions on the movement of people and goods. The EU and key member states should allow neither the momentum that has been built around the September 22 high-level conference co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia to support Palestinian statehood nor the ICJ’s advisory opinion finding Israel’s occupation illegal to be derailed. While Brussels must engage with the Trump administration on Gaza’s future, it must stay the course in demanding an end to Israeli occupation and support freedom for Palestinians.
H.A. Hellyer
Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
The EU has long professed support for a two-state solution while consistently refusing to wield its considerable leverage. It is the largest donor to Palestinians, Israel's most important trade partner, and possesses security instruments like EUBAM Rafah and EUPOL COPPS that could be central to any credible postwar architecture. Yet, internal divisions render it paralyzed, even as public pressure for a principled European stance intensifies.
If Brussels engages, it must do so on its own terms—rooted in international law, not as a supplicant to a U.S.-led process that lacks legitimacy among Palestinians, the Arab world, and the Global South. Europe's credibility hangs in the balance, particularly as the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) adjudicates allegations of genocide in Gaza.
The EU should pursue a seat—but only if it transforms rhetoric into concrete policy. A ceasefire cannot become a shroud for impunity. Accountability mechanisms must remain operational: trade conditionality, ICC enforcement, investigative commissions. These are not obstacles to peace; they are its prerequisites.
Europe must act with independence, coherence, and unwavering commitment to justice and international law. Otherwise, it becomes merely a legitimizing presence at someone else's table—lending credibility to a process that offers neither a just nor a durable peace.
Nathan J. Brown
Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University
In 2025, European states showed unusual success in coordinating a position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Key Arab states, that are also deeply divided, have recently done the same. These two unlikely coalitions then produced a detailed document—the July 2025 New York declaration. But even more impressive, they have taken the virtually unprecedented step of moving beyond hammering out statements to pursuing a diplomatic strategy consistently and insistently.
Should Europe now harness itself to Trump’s twenty point plan—a document more loophole than text, one that key actors have treated like a menu from which they can pick what they like and forget the rest? In particular, should Europe elbow its way to a Trump-headed board of peace?
Yes, but only if it does so as a supplement rather than an alternative to its recent activism.
The danger is that the suspension of hostilities will simply stall as the new reality, a shaky ceasefire in place without serious diplomacy or reconstruction. Europe would simply become a fig leaf if it does not play its cards—especially willingness to impose international isolation on Israel—with the same consistency and activism it has so recently discovered.
Erwin van Veen
Senior Research Fellow, Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael
It is time to face reality about the role of the EU in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories: Brussels has not been, cannot be, and will not be a unitary actor capable of meaningfully pressuring Israel to enable a rights-based resolution of the Palestinian issue. At the top, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has acted negligently, echoing mainstream German politics on the occupation of Gaza. Her acceptance of a honorary doctorate from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in June 2022 was a telltale sign.
Next, even if most member states could agree modest measures against Israel—like suspending trade preferences and individual sanctions—few wish to address its outright refusal of Palestinian statehood. Finally, two or three countries will likely block punitive measures against Israel that require unanimity. Instead, an EU coalition of willing should form on the French-Saudi initiative and improve on The Hague Group’s playbook to impose material sanctions on Israel, Fatah, and Hamas commensurate with their unwillingness to bring a two-state solution to life. A seat on Trump’s neocolonial, Gazan real estate focused, board of peace might just muster the union’s consensus.
Hussein Baoumi
Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Amnesty International
The EU should consider joining the proposed board of peace, but only if key conditions are met. Membership should give Brussels a role in shaping Gaza’s reconstruction and political future, lending weight to its long-stated commitment to a two-state solution. Active participation would allow Europe to press for transparency, institutional reform, and accountability on the ground.
Yet, the board’s framework remains opaque, and the political, legal, and reputational risks are considerable. Criticism would be inevitable, particularly if EU involvement were seen as enabling corruption, harm to Palestinians, or as undermining their right to self-determination. Conditional engagement is therefore essential. The EU should insist on meaningful local representation including the participation of the Palestinian Authority, a clear Israeli commitment to lift the blockade and end its control over Gaza, and robust oversight mechanisms.
Crucially, participation should not lead to the withdrawal or softening of the sanctions package proposed by the European Commission. Relinquishing the EU’s leverage over Israel without concrete concessions in the form of irreversible steps toward a viable Palestinian state would squander hard-won influence and reinforce perceptions of European irrelevance in the eyes of the United States, Israel and the Arab states.
Max Rodenbeck
Project Director, International Crisis Group
Yes, absolutely, the EU should join the board of peace. Making Trump’s fuzzy Gaza initiative work will take patience, understanding, and the clever use of leverage—particularly against Israel (if only because it is immensely more powerful than its adversary). It will also require broad international legitimacy. These are not elements that the Trump administration can or should try to supply on its own. One lesson of past Arab-Israeli peacemaking is that although it takes the United States to move things, when Washington monopolises the diplomacy, things tend to go wrong.
But Brussels should join the board of peace with clear understandings and objectives. Two crucial conditions should be that the board remain temporary—perhaps with a built-in time limit for its functions—and that it guarantee the representation not just of international interests, but most particularly of Palestinians. In terms of objectives, the EU should use its influence to ensure that the board focuses first on meeting human needs in Gaza—meaning reconstruction and rehabilitation—rather than on issues of security and governance. Those are obviously also crucial, but will take months or years to resolve. After two years of incalculable suffering, the people of Gaza need immediate relief.
