• US president praises ‘work being done by Hamas’
• Washington asks Yemen to contribute to international force
• EU eyes training Palestinian police personnel on West Bank model
WASHINGTON: The Board of Peace (BOP), which is slated to administer Gaza under the newly-approved US peace plan, may include the heads of many major world powers, President Donald Trump indicated.
“I hope your highness will be on the board,” Trump says to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a dinner the president is hosting for him at the White House.
“Everybody wants to be on the board, and it’ll end up being quite a large board because it’ll be the heads of every major country,” the US president said, a day after the UN Security Council adopted a resolution giving the US-led BOP a broad mandate to manage Gaza until the end of 2027.
Trump also thanked MBS for the role he played in securing last month’s Gaza ceasefire, without elaborating. During his remarks, the US president also had words of praise for Hamas, saying: “A lot of work has been done by Hamas, and a lot of a lot of people said they wouldn’t be doing that”.
He also said that there was a lot more safety in Gaza now than before the ceasefire.
Yemen asked to join ISF
Meanwhile, the government of Yemen has been approached to join the international force that would be deployed at the war-torn Palestinian territory, it emerged on Wednesday.
Several Yemeni government sources told AFP that Washington had approached Aden to participate in the new International Stabilisation Force (ISF), although they insisted that a final decision is yet to be made.
However, officials insisted that any Yemeni contribution to the force would be largely symbolic. “If we do participate, it will be just a few officers or soldiers in the operations room and the contacts room for logistical purposes. They will not be involved in other operations under this scheme,” a diplomat said.
Asked about the request, a US State Department spokesperson told AFP “we’re not going to detail private diplomatic conversations,” adding that Trump himself had said “there will be many exciting announcements in the coming weeks”.
Yemen’s internationally-recognised government is largely fractured and weakened after being kicked out of the capital Sanaa by the Houthi rebels in 2014, who now control most of the country’s population centres. The Houthis are fierce allies of Hamas, and are likely to be infuriated by Yemeni participation in the proposed international force, which the Palestinian group has largely decried.
The government largely relies on backing by US ally Saudi Arabia, which led an international coalition from early 2015 that failed to dislodge the Houthis.
Asked about Yemen’s incentives to join the force, the diplomat told AFP: “The issue is we cannot say no”.
EU training
Meanwhile, the European Union wants to train up to 3,000 Palestinian police officers in the Gaza Strip under a scheme similar to one it already runs in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an official said on Wednesday.
The UN-approved peace plan envisions the international force would work with Israel, Egypt and newly-trained Palestinian police to help secure border areas and de-militarise Gaza.
There will be a “need to stabilise Gaza with an important police force” if the current ceasefire endures, said the official.
The issue is likely to be discussed at a Palestinian donor conference, being held in Brussels today (Thursday).
Published in Dawn, November 20th, 2025
