The UN Security Council Endorses Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan

Image: Melnikov Dmitriy / shutterstock.com

On 29 September, President Donald Trump announced an audacious 20-point Gaza peace plan. I cautioned earlier that there were many potholes to be navigated on the pathway to Middle East peace. One of these was the unilateralism of the plan that had been devised completely outside the UN framework.

On Monday, that particular pothole was successfully navigated with the adoption of Security Council Resolution 2803 by a 13-0 vote, with China and Russia abstaining. The resolution endorses the US-backed ‘Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict’, welcomes the establishment of a Board of Peace (BoP), authorises the creation of a temporary International Stabilisation Force (ISF), underscores the full resumption of humanitarian aid, calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops based on standards, milestones and timeframes linked to demilitarisation, but permits an Israeli ‘security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat’ (Article 7). The terms for the BoP and other authorised entities run until 31 December 2027, with the possibility of renewal and with progress reports required every six months.

The resolution marks a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. Yet, it has many holes, some more gaping than others. This article discusses three of them.

The most immediately obvious is the abstention by two of the five permanent members (P5). That they did not vote affirmatively records their opposition to the package and the process. That they abstained indicates that they ‘read the room’, in particular wide Arab and Islamic countries’ support for the plan, and for political reasons chose not to the kill the resolution by casting a single or double veto, thus disowning any responsibility for the outcome.

For the longer-term prospects for peace in the decades-old conflict, nevertheless, this signals deep troubles ahead. China’s doubts stemmed from the lack of detail on several key points like the structure, composition and terms of reference for the BoP and the ISF, the lack of any effective UN role, the glaring invisibility of Palestine and the neglect of ‘Palestinian sovereignty and ownership’. Russia’s representative recalled the Security Council’s ‘unfortunate experience of seeing solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – pushed through by the United States – bringing about the opposite result of what was intended’, noted the departure from the cornerstone formula of the two-state solution, and warned about the risks of a peace-enforcement role for the ISF.

Second, in my October analysis, I noted that ‘Israel gets almost all its demands and conditions met … Hamas, not so much’. When the UK, Canada and Australia announced their recognition of the State of Palestine, Israel bitterly denounced it as rewarding terrorism, while Hamas welcomed it as long overdue recognition of justice for Palestinians. With Resolution 2803, by contrast, Hamas has rejected it while Israel has grudgingly acquiesced to it. Neither of the two most critical actors in the conflict will play a role in the transitional governance arrangements. Israel is troubled by the reference to ‘a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood’. The plan is centred on US interests, objectives, and policy priorities; Israel has a loud voice but no veto in US deliberations. Is the vagueness, ambiguity and uncertainty baked into Resolution 2803, necessary to gain wide support, worth the price already paid by Israel in lives lost and global diplomatic damage?

After the horrific attacks of 7 October 2023, Israel concluded that peaceful coexistence with Palestinians was not possible without destroying Hamas as a military, political and institutional force in Gaza, its replacement with a credible governance structure for the Strip to oversee its reconstruction and appropriate provisions, backed by credible guarantees, to prevent the return of terror to Israel. Anything less would be tantamount to national suicide in due course with the elimination of Israel as the only homeland for the world’s Jews. But for Hamas to agree to complete demilitarisation, disarmament, abandonment of any role in government, and surrender or exile is to commit instant suicide on all these dimensions. Hence their acceptance and partial fulfilment of the first phase of Trump’s plan that called for an immediate ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap.

No one can be surprised that Hamas has rejected Resolution 2803, insisting that it ‘imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip’ and that its fight against Israel is legitimate resistance against armed occupation. Besides, how can calls for democracy for the Palestinians be reconciled with refusing them the choice of voting for Hamas? Even more fundamentally, how can outsiders impose any political settlement that is opposed in key parts by both the two most significant actors in the conflict?

Third, Resolution 2803 is one of the strangest Security Council resolutions I can recall. Back in the day when I was the focal point for writing one of the late Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s reform reports, we tried to recommend that legacy resolutions that had passed their use-by date should perhaps no longer be endlessly cited in resolutions dealing with the issue to hand. Historic resolutions on the Israel-Palestine conflict were an obvious target and for that reason the proposal was roundly rejected by many member states as soon as it was floated. They objected to Israeli intransigence in rejecting UN demands on occupied territories and on expanding settlements, believing that the core resolutions were still vital to any eventual resolution of the underlying conflict as the framework within which a peace agreement must be negotiated and concluded.

Yet, Resolution 2803 singularly fails to recall such landmark Council resolutions as 242 (1967), 338 (1973), 1860 (2009), 2334 (2016), and also General Assembly Resolution 67/19 (2012). Between them, these resolutions establish that Palestinian territory is occupied, Israel cannot lawfully acquire territory by force, a settlement must be based on Israel’s withdrawal to pre-1967 lines, the UN has the primary responsibility for humanitarian aid delivery and the protection of Palestinian civilians, and Palestine is a non-member Observer State with pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital. The legal import of all this is significant, not merely cosmetic. Instead of being grounded in international law as recognised by the United Nations, Palestinian statehood is redefined as a future aspiration, contingent and dependent on Palestinian Authority reforms to the satisfaction of the United States and Israel. Moreover, the BoP will report to the Security Council but is not subordinate to it nor bound by past UN resolutions.

Nor is there any specificity on the proposed ISF, the key contributors to it, and its powers and functions. Will it be a traditional, consensual peacekeeping force or a robust peace-enforcement entity with the mandate and arms to match? The same vagueness and ambiguity exists with respect to the BoP. Will former UK prime minister Tony Blair, widely discredited and loathed for his role in the 2003 Iraq war, find a spot on it? Hamas is on record as having called on all factions to reject Blair’s involvement. Hamas official Basem Naim, while thanking Trump for his positive role in the peace deal, explained that ‘Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and maybe a lot [of] people around the world still remember his [Blair’s] role in causing the killing of thousands or millions of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.’

Thus Resolution 2803 validates and legitimises Trump’s Gaza peace plan. Will this restore UN centrality in the maintenance of international peace and security? Or will it batter the UN’s already damaged credibility beyond repair? Time will tell.

Related articles:

Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan: Today, tomorrow and the day after (3-minute read)

The return of the ugly American (3-minute read)

Donald Trump: Self-proclaimed peacemaker lacking fortune and expertise (3-minute read)

Donald Trump’s overwhelming force/surrender style of negotiation and governing (3-minute read) 

Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is a former Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute and editor of The nuclear ban treaty: a transformational reframing of the global nuclear order.