By Gatestone Institute | Created at 2026-08-30 10:00:09 | Updated at 2026-08-30 11:34:15
1 hour ago
An institution built around one person, such as the United States President Donald J. Trump,, carries that person's expiration date. The states that join it do not.
Nothing better explains the conduct of Turkey, Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia over the past eight months — and nothing in current American policy appears to be taking the countless dangerous signals from them seriously.
The real plan, as can be seen from Saudi Arabia's recent moves, seems to be to avoid joining the Abraham Accords, and instead position themselves in Gaza, right on the border of Israel, to be able to attack it after President Trump leaves office. No one will have his determination to make sure that any agreements are enforced.
Early on, Saudi Arabia came up with a "poison pill: the kingdom conditioned joining the Abraham Accords on creating a Palestinian State. Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman has since asked the US to provide Saudi Arabia with centrifuges to enrich uranium — supposedly, of course, "for peace purposes,"rather than importing fuel as other Gulf countries do. The request apparently led to the astonishing realization that these centrifuges could, at some point, also be used to make nuclear weapons -- the same kind Iran is not allowed to have. President Trump, to his great credit, the day after the agreement was signed, presented his own "poison pill": first, Saudi Arabia would have to normalize its relations with Israel and join the Abraham Accords. This requirement seems to have been, revealingly, a dealbreaker.
Instead, Saudi Arabia, organized the Mecca Mutual Defense Agreement with both Turkey, which has a vast military, and Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons. Based on the Middle East's frequent schoolyard excuse that "It all started when he hit me back," the three countries could, for instance, provoke or attack on Israel, then when Israel responded for its own self defense, claim that all three of them had been attacked and "forced" to retaliate: Turkey with its conventional military, Pakistan with a nuclear weapon, and Saudi Arabia by financing the expedition..
On August 17 in Jerusalem, Shin Bet director David Zini and military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder briefed Jared Kushner and the Board of Peace delegation on conditions inside Gaza and on Hamas's reconstruction of its capabilities. Their presentation included an assessment from the most senior levels of the Israeli security establishment concluded that Turkey has still been financing Hamas. Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan holds a seat on the Gaza Executive Board, the body charged with implementing the disarmament of that same organization. Both facts sat in the same room on the same afternoon and produced no visible consequence.
When the White House named the Executive Board for the Board of Peace in January, its members included Fidan, the senior Qatari official Ali Al-Thawadi and Egyptian intelligence chief Hassan Rashad. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated publicly that the composition had never been coordinated with Israel and ran contrary to its policy. Above Israel sits the Board of Peace itself, 28 countries operating under Security Council Resolution 2803, whose interim report to the Council identified Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United States as the four mediating states. The fifteen-point roadmap that now governs Hamas's disarmament was drafted by those four "guarantors," together with the High Representative for Gaza Nickolay Mladenov. What, though, will they actually be guaranteeing?
Israelis who have spent careers on this file do not treat the result as an accident. A former senior Shin Bet officer with three decades in the service has argued that the parties actually driving developments inside the board are Qatar and Turkey, assisted by Egypt. The arrangement amounts to the Muslim Brotherhood supervising the dismantlement of its own Palestinian branch, Hamas.
The Board describes itself as an objective mechanism. Its operational majority consists of governments historically hostile to Israel: they have spent two decades keeping the terrorist group Hamas solvent and politically respectable.
Turkey has been positioning its military and strengthening its hold on Syria, potentially for a pincer attack on Israel: from Syria on Israel's east and Gaza on Israel's west.
At the inaugural summit in February the Board denied Turkey a place in the International Stabilization Force, instead awarding troop slots to Albania, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo and Morocco, and giving Egypt and Jordan stewardship of police reconstruction. That arrangement left Turkey with logistics.
Hamas nevertheless keeps offices and personnel on Turkish soil, where it recruits, raises money and plans operations. Senior Israeli officials trace the Iranian money reaching Hamas and Hezbollah along a route running through Istanbul with Erdoğan's tolerance. On August 18, Israeli aircraft struck an airbase near Aleppo to stop a Turkish deployment against which Jerusalem had warned Damascus for weeks.
Money often settles what communiqués leave open. Eight governments -- among them Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco -- signed the founding donors' declaration behind roughly $17 billion in reconstruction pledges, against a World Bank estimate of $71.4 billion over a decade. A senior Board official, describing the three-year mechanism capped at $400 million for debts inherited from Hamas rule, said the outside money would come from regional partners rather than from Washington. Whoever pays the contractors, the suppliers and eventually the policemen will decide who governs the streets they patrol.
The political alignment already exists on paper. On August 3, Qatar, Egypt and Turkey published a declaration in their capacity as mediating countries, condemning Israeli operations in Gaza and calling on the international community to compel Israeli compliance.
Thirteen days later a further joint statement signed by Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia held Israel responsible for disrupting the peace effort and urged the Board of Peace to take concrete measures against any party obstructing implementation. The guarantors have a shared position on how this war ends, and it has nothing to do with security for Israel, to say the least.
The resource they are actually managing is time.
Kushner left the Jerusalem meeting predicting that weapons from Hamas could begin coming out of Gaza within thirty days and that tunnels might be filled within sixty to ninety.
Seven months after the ceasefire took effect, the stabilization force had still not deployed and the Palestinian technocratic committee built to administer Gaza can not physically enter it. An American second term ends in January 2029. The Board is chaired by President Trump in person and will pass to whoever succeeds him. Every month of delay moves the supposed complete disarmament of Hamas closer to that successor, and to the states that will still be seated at the table when he or she arrives.
Two decisions now before Washington would outlast the arrangement entirely. Standing beside Erdoğan in Ankara on July 7, President Trump signaled support for selling Turkey US F-35 stealth fighter jets. The Turkish president told reporters he had been promised five aircraft, a claim his host neither denied nor corrected.
Two weeks later the State Department informed Congress that Turkey has not met the statutory conditions set by Section 231 of CAATSA and Section 1245 of the 2020 defense authorization act, which require Ankara to give up Russian S-400surface-to-air missiles, which could shoot down F-35s. Erdogan replied that the S-400s were inactive and sitting in storage — presumably until they are taken out of storage.
The same letter, while praising Turkey as a founding member of the Board of Peace, voiced concern about relationship with Hamas.
Erdogan has made no secret of his intentions regarding Israel, as well as Syria, Cyprus and Greece. As recently as March 30, 2025, he stated , "May Allah, for the sake of his name ... destroy and devastate Zionist Israel" He also reportedly prayed for "mercy upon the martyrs" of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a "speedy recovery" for their wounded terrorists. Previously, Erdogan stated, "Jerusalem is our city," and "Patience brings victory, " and that "We are determined to not give up on our rights on Jerusalem." This is the country to which President Trump wants to give stealth fight jets?
The Saudi nuclear file runs on an identical clock. The draft civil cooperation agreement reported to Congress omits the supposed Saudi commitment to forgo enrichment and reprocessing that Washington spent two decades calling the gold standard. The Agreement refers instead to additional safeguards in the most sensitive areas of cooperation, which is diplomatic phrasing for centrifuges on Saudi soil.
Once submitted, the text takes effect unless both chambers adopt resolutions of disapproval within ninety days. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said for years that the kingdom would pursue a weapon if Iran obtained one. Moreover, Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Agreement, a "mutual defense pact" with Turkey and Pakistan on August 7. Immediately, Saudi officials made it clear that if Israel will not meet their terms on the Palestinian question they will find other partners. Washington's own energy secretary signed the nuclear framework before President Trump announced the next day, that its approval depended on Saudi accession to the Abraham Accords, a condition the kingdom has spent the summer demonstrating it can live without.
Congress is the only American institution whose calendar runs longer than a presidency, and the remedies to the current administration arming terrorist supporting, jihadist, long-term enemies of Israel are unglamorous but effective.
Even if the S-400 batteries have been shipped from Turkish territory and the Hamas offices in Istanbul have been independently verified as closed, no F-35 stealth fighter jets should go should goto Turkey. After all, the S-400 surface-to-air missiles could always find their way back.
In addition, no centrifuges should go to Saudi Arabia even if a binding Saudi renunciation of enrichment and reprocessing were written into the operative text, not a side letter. As we have seen with Iran, no one but Trump can be counted on to enforce international commitments.
Not one dollar for reconstruction should be disbursed through channels controlled by governments that Israeli intelligence has identified as financing the organization the money is meant to displace.
The Board of Peace was created by an executive decision and can be undone by one. What Turkey and Saudi Arabia want from Washington is hardware, and hardware will still be flying and still be spinning long after the Board that vouched for them has finally wound up.
