Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accepted an invitation to join US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace.
A statement from his office said Netanyahu would become a member of the board “which is to be comprised of world leaders”.
The board was originally thought to be aimed at helping end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and oversee reconstruction. But its proposed charter does not mention the Palestinian territory and appears to be designed to supplant functions of the UN.
Pope Leo has also received an invitation to join the board, the Vatican’s top diplomatic official said on Wednesday afternoon.
“I believe it will be something that requires a bit of time for consideration before giving a response,” Cardinal Pietro Parolin told reporters.
So far, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have also agreed to join, as have Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Turkey and Vietnam.
It is not clear how many countries have been invited to join Trump’s new body -Canada, Russia, Turkey and the UK are among them, but have not yet publicly responded.
Norway has said it will not join because the current proposal “raises a number of questions”, while France and Sweden have indicated they will do the same.
According to a document leaked to the media, the Board of Peace’s charter enters into force “upon expression of consent to be bound by three states”.
Member states will be given a renewable three-year term, but they can secure a permanent place if they contribute $1bn (£740m) of funding to the board, it says.
The charter declares that the board will be “an international organisation that seeks to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict”. It will “undertake such peace-building functions in accordance with international law”.
Trump will be the chairman but also “separately serve” as representative of the US. A US official has said the chairmanship can be held by Trump “until he resigns it”, but that a future US president may choose a new representative.
As chairman, he will have “exclusive authority to create, modify or dissolve subsidiary entities as necessary or appropriate to fulfil the Board of Peace’s mission”, according to the document.
He will also select “leaders of global stature” to serve two-year terms on an Executive Board that will help deliver the mission of the Board of Peace, US officials say.
Last Friday, the White House named the seven members of the founding Executive Board. They included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as former British prime minister Tony Blair.
Trump also named Nickolay Mladenov, a Bulgarian politician and former UN Middle East envoy, as the Board of Peace’s representative on the ground in Gaza during phase two of Trump’s peace plan, which should see the reconstruction and demilitarisation of the territory, including the disarmament of Hamas, as well as a full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Mladenov will act as a link with a Palestinian technocratic government which will “oversee the restoration of core public services, the rebuilding of civil institutions, and the stabilisation of daily life”.
A separate Gaza Executive Board will help support the technocratic government, according to the White House.
A UN Security Council resolution adopted in November authorised the Board of Peace “as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza”. Its mandate would expire at the end of 2027.
On Saturday, Netanyahu’s office said the Gaza Executive Board’s composition “was not co-ordinated with Israel and runs contrary to its policy”.
Israeli media said the decision to include representatives of Turkey and Qatar – which both helped broker the ceasefire that took effect in October, along with Egypt and the US – had happened “over Israel’s head”.
Under phase one of the peace plan, Hamas and Israel agreed to the ceasefire, an exchange of living and dead Israeli hostages in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, a partial Israeli withdrawal, and a surge in deliveries of humanitarian aid.
Israel has said it can only move into the second phase after Hamas hands over the body of the last dead hostage.
Phase two faces major challenges, with Hamas having previously refused to give up its weapons without the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and Israel having not committed to fully withdrawing from Gaza.
The ceasefire is also fragile. More than 460 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes since it came into force, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, while the Israeli military says three of its soldiers have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 71,550 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry.
