The U.N. Security Council’s endorsement of President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan gives a welcome legal imprimatur to the agreement. The next challenge is to form a “Board of Peace” to administer Gaza and to find troops for an International Stabilization Force to maintain security in the war-torn enclave.
Count the Security Council’s 13-0 vote as a diplomatic victory for the Trump administration, which lobbied hard for it. China and Russia abstained because they are united in trying to deny the U.S. any diplomatic victory in the Middle East. Either could have used its veto power to scuttle the plan, but they were persuaded to desist on account of broad Arab and Muslim backing.
The next steps won’t be easy. Barely was the ink dry on the Security Council resolution when Hamas announced its rejection of the terms. The terrorist group criticized the plan for placing an international trusteeship over Gaza and because the next stage calls for Hamas to lay down its weapons or be disarmed by force. Without the terror group’s compliance, most countries will be highly unlikely to send troops to Gaza. Participating in the stabilization force becomes much less palatable if it means battling armed Hamas militants in the streets.
Disarming Hamas, which started the war with its Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, has always been the thorniest step in the peace plan. There has never been much clarity about how that would be accomplished, who would verify it and precisely what “disarmament” entails. Does disarmament cover only the terror group’s heavy weapons capable of striking Israeli targets? Or does it mean disposing of every last AK-47?
Israel believes it has degraded around 40 percent of the group’s sophisticated tunnel infrastructure, but that still leaves many miles of tunnel for hiding weaponry. And there seems to be no plan for separating fighters from civilians. Hamas militants can blend in with the population.
Hamas clearly has no plans to surrender control over Gaza. In the five weeks since the peace plan first came into effect and the Israeli hostages were released, the group has taken a more visible role in the part of the enclave from which Israeli troops evacuated. Any survey of Palestinians in Gaza should be viewed skeptically, but one recent poll suggests that Hamas has enjoyed a surge in popularity since the end of the fighting, because it is the only organization currently in Gaza providing security and preventing looting.
That has to change for the other phases of the peace plan to have any chance of moving forward. If the Arab and Muslim countries like Indonesia, Turkey, Qatar and Egypt are unwilling to step up and do the tough business of disarmament, Israel may be forced to return. “Just as we are determined to bring all the hostages home, we will demonstrate the same determination in ensuring that Hamas is disarmed,” warned Israel’s U.N. envoy Danny Danon. If Israel returns, innocent Palestinians would once again suffer in the crossfire.
Hamas has also rejected the U.N. resolution because the group’s leaders say it does not clearly guarantee a future Palestinian state. That was the same reason other countries on the Security Council were initially reluctant to back the plan. But the critics backed it anyway because of language that says if all the other steps are completed, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
That sounds reasonable enough, but much of the Israeli population remains skeptical of a two-state solution, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before the vote that “our opposition to a Palestinian state on any territory has not changed.” Hamas remains the primary obstacle to peace, but Israel also has tough choices ahead.
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