FIVE THINGS THE BOARD OF PEACE MUST FIX — AND FIVE RULES THAT MUST NEVER BE COMPROMISED WHEN INTERNATIONAL FORCES DEPLOY
JAFAJ STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE
The Board of Peace has crossed an important threshold. It is no longer simply a political concept. Through the Gaza framework and the proposed International Stabilization Force, it is moving from institutional design toward operational implementation.
That makes the next question unavoidable:
What happens when international troops actually have to use force?
The answer cannot be improvised in the field.
The Board of Peace needs institutional repairs before it can function as a durable international security mechanism. And any international stabilization force operating under its authority needs rules that are explicit, enforceable and understood before the first soldier enters a dangerous environment.
The United Nations learned this lesson over decades. Its peacekeeping doctrine rests on three fundamental principles: **consent of the parties, impartiality, and non-use of force except in self-defense and defense of the mandate.**¹
The Board of Peace is attempting something different. Security Council Resolution 2803 authorized an International Stabilization Force for Gaza with responsibilities extending beyond traditional peacekeeping, including supporting demilitarization, protecting civilians and humanitarian operations, supporting Palestinian police, securing humanitarian corridors and monitoring the ceasefire.²
That makes precision even more important.
The Board should fix five institutional weaknesses now.
And it should establish five rules for international forces that cannot be negotiated away once troops are deployed.
FIVE THINGS THE BOARD OF PEACE NEEDS TO FIX
- FIX THE CHAIN OF COMMAND
The first problem is simple:
Who gives the order?
An international force cannot operate effectively if political authority, military command and national governments are pulling in different directions.
Resolution 2803 provides that the International Stabilization Force will operate under a unified command acceptable to the Board of Peace, with forces contributed by participating states.³ That is a necessary starting point. It is not enough.
The Board needs a written command architecture establishing:
- who is the political authority;
- who is the military commander;
- who controls operational orders;
- who can authorize the use of force;
- who can change the mission;
- who can suspend an operation;
- who can order a withdrawal;
- and what happens when a contributing government disagrees with the commander.
National governments should not retain informal veto power over operational decisions while simultaneously expecting a multinational commander to deliver a unified mission.
The Board needs one operational chain of command.
National caveats should be disclosed before deployment, not discovered during a firefight.
- FIX THE FUNDING SYSTEM
A peace force cannot operate on political promises alone.
The Board’s current financing model relies substantially on voluntary contributions.⁴ That gives the organization flexibility, but it also creates a vulnerability: donors can promise money today and reconsider tomorrow.
That is not adequate for a serious stabilization mission.
A military force needs predictable funding for:
- salaries and allowances;
- transportation;
- fuel;
- communications;
- intelligence;
- medical evacuation;
- bases;
- equipment;
- logistics;
- rotation of personnel;
- police training;
- infrastructure;
- reconstruction support.
The Board should therefore create a multi-year stabilization fund backed by predictable financing commitments rather than headline pledges.
It should also establish:
- an independent audit mechanism;
- public reporting requirements;
- donor disclosure;
- separation between political contributions and operational budgets;
- an emergency reserve;
- rules preventing a single donor from acquiring effective operational control through financing.
The issue is not merely whether the Board can raise money.
It must prove that the money can be governed.
That question has already attracted outside scrutiny. The Carnegie Endowment has highlighted concerns about the Board’s concentrated authority, donor uncertainty and the scale of reconstruction financing required in Gaza.⁵
A force that depends upon voluntary contributions must have extraordinary financial transparency.
- FIX THE BOARD’S ACCOUNTABILITY STRUCTURE
Speed is valuable.
Unchecked authority is dangerous.
The Board’s concentrated decision-making structure is intended to allow it to act more quickly than traditional multilateral institutions.
But speed cannot become a substitute for institutional accountability.
The Board should establish:
- a clearly defined term of office for its chairman;
- independent financial oversight;
- published decisions;
- conflict-of-interest rules;
- an inspector-general function;
- an independent mechanism for investigating misconduct;
- procedures for removing senior officials;
- and a formal process for resolving disputes over the interpretation of the Charter.
The objective is not to turn the Board into another version of the UN bureaucracy.
It is to prevent the opposite problem:
an international security institution becoming dependent upon the judgment of one individual or one political administration.
If the Board is intended to survive beyond the administration that created it, its institutional legitimacy must eventually become greater than its founding personality.
- FIX THE MISSION BEFORE DEPLOYING THE FORCE
A military organization should never be sent into a politically ambiguous environment with a mission statement that can mean five different things.
The Board needs to distinguish among:
Peacekeeping.
Peace enforcement.
Stabilization.
Counterterrorism.
Occupation or transitional administration.
These are not interchangeable missions.
The Gaza mandate includes demilitarization and decommissioning of weapons from armed groups, along with civilian protection and police development.⁶ That is substantially broader than simply standing between two armed parties.
The Board therefore needs a mission classification system.
Before deployment, the Board should publicly identify:
- the political objective;
- the military objective;
- the permitted use of force;
- the prohibited uses of force;
- the expected duration;
- the transition conditions;
- the withdrawal conditions;
- the authority responsible for the next phase.
Otherwise, a peacekeeping mission can slowly become a warfighting mission without anyone formally acknowledging that the mission has changed.
- FIX THE EXIT STRATEGY BEFORE THE ENTRY STRATEGY
International forces have a tendency to become permanent when nobody can define the conditions for leaving.
The Board should therefore answer the exit question before deployment.
An international force should not simply have a calendar expiration date.
It should have measurable benchmarks.
For example:
- armed groups disarmed;
- weapons stockpiles secured or eliminated;
- local police trained and operational;
- border security transferred;
- civilian government functioning;
- humanitarian access established;
- courts and basic services operating;
- external military forces withdrawn;
- local security institutions capable of maintaining order.
The Board should publish these benchmarks before deployment.
That would change the question from:
“When does the force leave?”
to:
“What has to be accomplished before the force can leave?”
That is a much stronger basis for stabilization.
FIVE THINGS THAT MUST BE FIRMLY FIXED IN PLACE
- THE FORCE MUST HAVE A CLEAR LEGAL MANDATE
Every soldier must know what authority permits the force to operate.
Every commander must know what the force is authorized to do.
Every host government must know what the force is authorized to do.
The civilian population should be able to understand what the force is authorized to do and what it is intended to accomplish.
Resolution 2803 provides a useful model because the Security Council explicitly authorized the International Stabilization Force and described its responsibilities.⁷
The lesson is straightforward:
No vague mandates.
The authorization must specify the mission, authority, duration and reporting requirements.
- THE RULES ON USE OF FORCE MUST BE WRITTEN BEFORE DEPLOYMENT
This is the most important rule of all.
A soldier should never have to discover the rules of engagement by trial and error.
The rules must establish:
- when force may be used;
- when lethal force may be used;
- when force may be used to protect civilians;
- when force may be used to defend the mandate;
- what constitutes an imminent threat;
- what constitutes hostile intent;
- what constitutes hostile action;
- how detainees are handled;
- what weapons are authorized;
- who can authorize escalation.
UN peacekeeping’s traditional principle is that force is not used except in self-defense and defense of the mandate.⁸
The Board’s stabilization model may require broader authority.
If it does, that authority must be explicit.
There should be no ambiguity between peacekeeping and peace enforcement.
- CIVILIAN PROTECTION MUST BE A NON-NEGOTIABLE MANDATE
The civilian population cannot become an afterthought.
An international stabilization force exists to create a security environment in which civilians can live without armed groups, predatory security forces or uncontrolled violence.
That requires more than protecting humanitarian convoys.
The force needs procedures for:
- civilian evacuation;
- medical emergencies;
- protection of humanitarian workers;
- protection of schools and hospitals;
- prevention of collective punishment;
- treatment of detainees;
- investigation of civilian deaths;
- reporting alleged abuses.
A force that protects the political process while failing to protect the population will lose legitimacy rapidly.
- IMPARTIALITY MUST BE DEFINED — NOT ASSUMED
This is where the Board’s model could face its greatest conceptual challenge.
Traditional UN peacekeeping treats impartiality as a foundational principle.⁹
But a stabilization force charged with disarming armed groups is not necessarily neutral between lawful order and armed resistance to that order.
The Board therefore needs a more precise standard:
The force must be impartial in the application of its rules, but it cannot be neutral about violations of its mandate.
That distinction needs to be written into doctrine.
If an armed group violates the ceasefire, the force must respond.
If a government violates the force’s mandate, the force must respond.
If a militia attacks civilians, the force must respond.
If a contributor’s troops commit abuses, the force must respond.
The rule must apply regardless of political identity.
- ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE FORCE MUST BE INDEPENDENT
The final rule is simple:
International troops should not be solely responsible for investigating serious allegations against their own personnel.
Every stabilization mission needs an independent mechanism to investigate allegations involving its personnel.
That mechanism should have authority to investigate:
- unlawful killings;
- excessive force;
- abuse of detainees;
- sexual exploitation and abuse;
- corruption;
- theft;
- trafficking;
- discrimination;
- politically motivated targeting;
- violations of the rules of engagement.
The mechanism should publish regular reports.
If a soldier violates the law, the victim should not have to determine which national government the soldier came from before filing a complaint.
The force needs one recognizable accountability system.
THE JAFAJ TEST
The Board of Peace does not need to become another United Nations.
It needs to become something better defined.
The Board’s potential advantage is speed, flexibility and the ability to assemble a coalition around a specific mission. Its danger is moving faster than its institutional safeguards can support.
The Gaza experiment therefore should not be judged solely by whether troops can enter the territory.
It should be judged by whether the Board can answer five questions:
Who commands?
Who pays?
Who authorizes force?
Who investigates misconduct?
Who decides when the mission is finished?
If those five questions cannot be answered clearly, adding more troops will not solve the underlying problem.
It will magnify it.
The United Nations spent decades developing doctrines, rules, reimbursement systems, command structures and accountability mechanisms for international peace operations. The Board of Peace does not have the luxury of decades.
It has to build the institutional architecture before the crisis forces it to improvise.
That is the central lesson of Gaza.
And it may ultimately determine whether the Board becomes a durable international institution—or merely another temporary mechanism created for one extraordinary crisis.
JAFAJ BOTTOM LINE
The Board of Peace needs five things fixed:
COMMAND. FUNDING. ACCOUNTABILITY. MISSION DEFINITION. EXIT STRATEGY.
International forces need five things fixed:
LEGAL AUTHORITY. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT. CIVILIAN PROTECTION. IMPARTIAL APPLICATION OF THE MANDATE. INDEPENDENT ACCOUNTABILITY.
Get those ten things right, and the Board has the foundation for a credible international stabilization model.
Get them wrong, and a larger force will not fix the institutional problem.