{"id":23138,"date":"2026-05-01T16:21:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23138\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T16:21:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T16:21:24","slug":"jared-kushner-steve-witkoff-and-the-profitable-business-of-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/23138\/","title":{"rendered":"Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and the Profitable Business of Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThey didn\u2019t send the Board of Peace charter to the Senate for advice and consent to a treaty, and there are no statutes that authorize U.S. participation,\u201d said Michael Mattler, a former assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs at the State Department. Trump authorized U.S. participation in the board unilaterally and established himself \u2014 in his private capacity \u2014 as chairman, with no limits on his term. \u201cThis is an organization composed of states, but that by its own rules gives a private individual a controlling role,\u201d Mattler said. That makes it a \u201cuniquely structured organization,\u201d he said, compared with other international groups.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers are noticing the murky legal status. Several Democratic congressional investigations are looking into both Witkoff\u2019s and Kushner\u2019s financial records and international relationships. In mid-April, four Democratic senators announced<\/a> a probe of the Board of Peace\u2019s proposal to create a stablecoin for Gaza, pointing out that a number of its executives, including Witkoff and Trump himself, could stand to profit.<\/p>\n

In a letter addressed to Kushner announcing a House Judiciary Committee probe of his dual role as an investor and a \u201cvolunteer\u201d government representative, Representative Jamie Raskin wrote, \u201cYou cannot faithfully represent the United States with billions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati cash burning a hole in every pocket of every suit you own.\u201d By continuing to do so, Kushner was effectively insisting \u201cthat the normal rules do not apply to you,\u201d Raskin argued.<\/p>\n

Under the Trump administration\u2019s privatization of peace, the \u201cnormal rules\u201d no longer exist at all. Yet exceptional wars require exceptional solutions. If the Board of Peace does bring stability and governance to embattled regions, it\u2019s of course possible that in some quarters, all its flaws will be forgiven. An imperfect peace, or a fragile cease-fire, is better than nothing, even if survivors find themselves returning to territories that have been stripped of their autonomy and natural resources \u2014 if they are able to return at all.<\/p>\n

But even this grim vision of peace still seems a long way off given the recent record of the Trump administration\u2019s diplomacy. Some 800 people have been killed in Gaza since the October cease-fire; a settlement between Russia and Ukraine has only become less likely since the United States relaxed sanctions on Russian oil because of its war on Iran; ongoing negotiations with Hamas have repeatedly broken down; Kushner and Witkoff\u2019s previous meetings with mediators on Iran have failed, by some accounts because they did not fully grasp the intricacies of nuclear issues, and the deal on the table would fall short of the administration\u2019s stated goal of preventing Iran from ever producing a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n

Rising energy prices have begun to strain American households, but Trump and his \u201cpeople\u201d aren\u2019t feeling the squeeze. Witkoff has said he is in the process of divesting from his real estate and crypto holdings; in 2024, Kushner said he would \u201ctry to pre-emptively avoid any conflicts of interests.\u201d But both men have seen their wealth grow significantly since Trump returned to office. And the peace they have long promised remains out of reach.<\/p>\n

Source images for illustration above: Krisztian Bocsi\/Bloomberg, via Getty Images; Andrew Harnik\/Getty Images; Mohammed Eslayeh\/Anadolu, via Getty Images; NiseriN\/Getty Images; Probst\/ullstein bild, via Getty Images; Mandel Ngan\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images; mapo\/Getty Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey didn\u2019t send the Board of Peace charter to the Senate for advice and consent to a treaty,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14102,13178,14103,14106,12565,9391,4262,8,14104,4689,19,12569,12568,9,1425,12566,790,12571,7,536,600,14105,11259,14101,12570],"class_list":{"0":"post-23138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-affinity-partners","9":"tag-andrew","10":"tag-board-of-peace","11":"tag-carnegie","12":"tag-embargoes-and-sanctions","13":"tag-gaza-strip","14":"tag-hamas","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-international-court-of-justice-un","17":"tag-international-relations","18":"tag-iran","19":"tag-jared","20":"tag-kushner","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-pakistan","23":"tag-peace-process","24":"tag-russia","25":"tag-steven","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-ukraine","28":"tag-united-nations","29":"tag-united-nations-human-rights-council","30":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government","31":"tag-virtual-currency","32":"tag-witkoff"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116500239645201354","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}