DONALD TRUMP’S Board of Peace was slammed as a “board of war” by campaigners today as the US president launched it at Davos.

With the US president in exclusive control and membership mainly comprising despots and far-right leaders, the board’s first task will be to impose a free-market property development regime on Gaza.

Representatives of only 19 countries plus the United States attended the board’s glitzy launch ceremony at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Mr Trump is named in the charter as a member and chairman for life, even beyond the end of his presidential term.

Just 23 nations have signed up so far. They are Albania, Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

“With a charter, mandate and membership like this, it’s very clear that this is a board of war,” a spokeswoman for the Stop the War Coalition commented.

“Far from a remit to bring peace and justice to the Palestinian people, its intention is to continue ethnic cleansing plans in a way that is lucrative to Western capital.

“Because, in Trump’s inverted world, ​war is peace, colonialism is progress and genocide is prosperity,” she added.

“This isn’t the United States, this is for the world,” the US president proclaimed.

“I think we can spread it out to other things as we succeed in Gaza,” he added, repeating his view that the board could replace some United Nations functions and perhaps even make that entire body obsolete one day. 

But he was more conciliatory in his remarks on the sidelines of the forum.

“We’ll do it in conjunction with the UN,” Mr Trump said, even as he attacked the UN for doing what he said wasn’t enough to calm some conflicts around the globe.

Voicing growing concerns over how the board could be used to undermine the UN, China has declined to participate.

“China has always practised true multilateralism. No matter how the international situation changes, China firmly upholds the UN-centred international system,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said this week.

Norway and Sweden have indicated that they won’t participate, after France also said no. French officials stressed that while they support the Gaza peace plan, they were also concerned the board could seek to replace the UN as the main venue for resolving conflicts.

Canada, Ukraine and the European Commission have also stood back. 

Britain will not take part, at least for now.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “We won’t be one of the signatories today, because this is about a legal treaty that raises much broader issues.

“We do also have concerns about [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin being part of something which is talking about peace, when we have still not seen any signs from Putin that there will be a commitment to peace in Ukraine.”

Russia has not, in fact, agreed to take part and was not involved in the Davos performance today.

Mr Putin said that his country was still consulting with Moscow’s “strategic partners” and studying the board’s plan before deciding whether to commit.

The main focus of the plan, presented by Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is to redevelop Gaza as a free-market real estate opportunity based on US investment.

The US president himself said he looked at Gaza as a “real estate person at heart. Look at this location on the sea — people that are living so poorly are going to be so well, but it all began with the location.”

Britain’s former prime minister Tony Blair, who is to serve on an executive board subordinated to the main body, sat in the front row throughout.

Your Party MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “The people of Gaza deserve better than Trump’s gang of rogues. The Palestinian people — and only the Palestinian people — should determine their own future.”

The Palestinians are not represented on the board or the executive board carving up their future.

Months into the so-called ceasefire, Gaza’s two million Palestinians continue to suffer the humanitarian crisis unleashed by more than two years of war. 

Israeli forces have also continued their killing spree, causing the death of more than 470 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect on October 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. 

At least 77 have been killed by Israeli gunfire near an ill-defined ceasefire line that divides Israeli-held areas from those occupied by most of Gaza’s Palestinian population, the ministry says.

Israeli forces killed at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday, including two 13-year-old boys, three journalists and a woman, hospitals said, making it one of the war-battered enclave‘s deadliest days since the ceasefire.

The new Trump board will be charged with trying to push the deal forward and implement its challenging second phase, even though Palestinians in Gaza have seen little evidence of phase one.

The three Palestinian journalists killed on Wednesday died when their vehicle was hit by Israeli fire as they  were filming a new displacement camp managed by an Egyptian government committee in the Netzarim area, said committee spokesman Mohammed Mansour.

He said the journalists had been documenting the committee’s work and that the strike occurred about three miles from the Israeli-controlled area. 

The vehicle was known to Israel’s military as belonging to the committee, Mr Mansour added. 

One journalist killed, Abdul Raouf Shaat, was a regular contributor to Agence France-Presse (AFP), but he was not on assignment for it at the time, the news agency said.

“Abdul was much loved by the AFP team covering Gaza. They remember him as a kind-hearted colleague,” the agency said in a statement that also demanded a full investigation into his death.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 200 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli onslaught began in 2023.

Aside from rare guided tours, Israel has barred international journalists from entering to cover the war. News organisations rely largely on Palestinian journalists in Gaza and residents to find out what is happening.

Israel’s military claimed to have spotted suspects who were operating a drone that posed a threat to its troops.

The two boys were killed in separate incidents. In one, a 13-year-old, his father and another man were hit by Israeli drones on the eastern side of the Bureij refugee camp, according to officials at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah, which received the bodies.

The other 13-year-old was shot by troops in the eastern town of Bani Suheila, Nasser Hospital said after receiving the body.

His mother, Safaa al-Sharafy, said he had left to gather firewood for cooking.

“He went out in the morning, hungry,” she said, with tears running down her cheeks. “He told me he’d go quickly and come back.”