The Mexican state of Tamaulipas is located in northeast Mexico, and its border with Texas stretches some 370 kilometers to the Gulf of Mexico, comprising about 12% of the Mexico-US border.
Tamaulipas, one of six Mexican states that borders the US, stands out because it is arguably the most violent, being the only one of the six that has earned a US State Department “Do Not Travel” advisory due to “terrorism, crime, and kidnapping.”
According to the State Department advisory, “There is a risk of violence in the state from terrorist groups, cartels, gangs, and criminal organizations.”
Imagine, for a moment, that the international community, wanting to clean up Tamaulipas and make it great again, decided to set up a governing board that included representatives from China and Cuba. How would that – having two of America’s greatest foes right on its border – go over in Washington?
That illustration is one that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar might do well to arm himself with when he speaks to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the inclusion of Turkey and Qatar into the board of directors and executive that is to have a hand in running Gaza.
Will this change the US administration’s mind regarding the new Gaza governing architecture? Probably not.
But it does put in concrete terms that Americans can easily understand why Israel is opposed to the inclusion of Qatar and Turkey, two countries that are affiliated with the Islamic ideology that motivates Hamas, and whose hostility and downright hatred of Israel is barely veiled.
Yet, according to the White House announcement on Friday of the governing bodies for implementation of Phase Two of President Donald Trump’s 20-point roadmap to end the Gaza conflict, both countries are to be well represented in those bodies.
A new reality for Israel
Israel can oppose this, as a statement put out by the Prime Minister’s Office on Saturday made clear it does, and even try to fight it, which Sa’ar is expected to do to some extent in his conversation with Rubio. But it is unlikely to change it.
This is a new reality Israel is going to have to deal with. How it got there, what diplomatic missteps enabled this situation, is something for the politicians to battle out, and they already are. But Turkish and Qatari involvement in the Phase Two architecture is a given. So now the question is, what should Israel do? How should it deal with this turn of events, beyond bewailing it and having its politicians blame one another?
Before delving into these questions, however, it is worth looking at the entire, cumbersome Board of Peace (BoP) architecture that Trump announced on Friday.
One way to make sense of this architecture is to imagine Gaza as a large university campus emerging from a catastrophic crisis, including physical destruction, institutional collapse, and years of mismanagement by an evil administration.
As the campus tries to rebuild itself, the question is not only who will teach the classes, but who will set the vision, run the campus, control security, and ensure that the garbage is actually picked up.
At the very top of this organizational structure is the university’s Board of Trustees, which is the equivalent of Trump’s BoP and is made up of several international leaders.
Trustees at a university don’t run the departments, teach the courses, or manage the payroll. Their role is more big-picture: defining the university’s direction, safeguarding its mission, approving major budgets, and holding leadership accountable.
In Gaza’s case, the BoP is charged with overseeing the entire 20-point Trump plan – ensuring that reconstruction, stabilization, and long-term governance in Gaza move forward and that international funding and political backing materialize.
THE MEMBERS of this board have not been named, though Trump will lead it and it will include dozens of international leaders, among them Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as friends like Argentine President Javier Milei. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been invited to join.
A university Board of Trustees, however, does not deal with the day-to-day; for that, there is generally a president’s cabinet or executive committee – the equivalent in Gaza being the Gaza Executive Board. This is a body close to the senior leadership, with each member overseeing a different portfolio.
Using the university analogy, trustees say they will rebuild the destroyed campus, and this group describes how, in what order, and where the money will come from.
The BoP Executive Board comprises seven members, including Rubio, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Tony Blair. In other words, this executive is by no means stacked against Israel.
This committee has senior advisors – Aryeh Lightstone and Josh Gruenbaum – whose job is to oversee coordination and make sure that decisions don’t get lost in bureaucratic mazes.
Another role in Trump’s architecture is the High Representative for Gaza, who would be the equivalent of a university provost, ensuring that the trustees’ decisions actually filter down. The man tapped for this post is Nickolay Mladenov, a former Bulgarian defense and foreign minister and UN Mideast envoy.
The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza
That brings us to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) – the body composed of Palestinian “technocrats” tasked with running the day-to-day affairs in Gaza, rebuilding civil institutions, and stabilizing daily life. It is not a board or a diplomatic forum. It is the university administration itself: the team that runs daily operations.
Alongside this body is the Gaza Executive Board, which is the equivalent of a university board of advisors and oversees and supports the NCAG’s work. This body currently includes 11 members, including senior officials from Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, and the UAE, but also Witkoff, Kushner, Blair, Cypriot-Israeli billionaire Yakir Gabay, and American Jewish billionaire Marc Rowan.
Finally, no campus functions without security, which is where the International Stabilization Force comes into play, with Trump naming Maj.-Gen. Jasper Jeffers is the commander of this yet-to-be-established force.
What is critical here from Israel’s perspective, and a red line, is that there be no Turkish troops in this force. It’s one thing to have a Turkish official on the Gaza Executive Board, one of at least 11, whose voice can be neutralized. It’s another thing to have Turkish security forces looking down gun barrels at IDF soldiers. The former is a challenge that can be finessed; the latter is a catastrophe waiting to happen.
This new architecture is something Jerusalem will have to learn to navigate, recognizing that it is unlikely to change the overall structure. For example, Israel is not going to succeed in expelling Turkey or Qatar from these forums; that fight has already been lost. The more realistic goal is to limit how much influence they are able to exert.
This means avoiding the temptation to turn this into a political or moral debate inside the various boards. In large institutions – universities, corporations, international bodies – arguments are rarely settled by persuasion, and more often by rules and procedures.
And it is here – defining the rules and setting the procedures – where Israel needs to make its voice heard. As Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel said in an Army Radio interview on Sunday, “In the final analysis, things need to be done with our agreement. Nothing can be fixed in place unilaterally.” In other words, Jerusalem is not without leverage.
From Israel’s perspective, the priority needs to be ensuring that security requirements – such as Hamas’ demilitarization – are not treated as aspirational goals but as operating conditions.
Demilitarization benchmarks need to be concrete, time-bound, and independently verified, with automatic consequences if they are missed. Reconstruction of Gaza needs to be tied to specific demilitarization milestones.
Regarding Qatar and Turkey, Israel may not be able to keep them out of these forums, but should insist – in addition to a red line regarding no Turkish troops – that those countries have no control over timelines, over enforcement of demilitarization, and over certifying when this has been accomplished.
Now that Trump has constructed and unveiled this system, Israel should shift the debate from “who is in” to “who decides.” And instead of arguing that Turkey and Qatar should not be there, it should work in close cooperation with the Americans to ensure that while they may participate in certain parts of Phase Two, they are not making the decisions, setting the terms, or enforcing them.