Bernard Spiegal

On the 17 November 2025, the Security Council passed – thirteen in favour, zero dissenting, with China and Russia abstaining – Resolution 2803 endorsing Trump’s twenty-point plan for Gaza.

The Security Council-endorsed plan is notable for the comprehensive way it marginalises potential Palestinian agency in contrast to Israel being treated as pretty well near an equal partner. The plan creates a quasi-colonial structure, the so-called Trump-chaired Board of Peace, which will be responsible for Gaza’s transformation into a disarmed – disarmed Palestinians, not disarmed Israelis – enclave. A proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF), more of which below, will be formed of participating nations, the ISF responsible to the Board of Peace.

Reinforcement of a by now established tradition: flouting international law.

The 20-point Trump plan flouts international law by effectively ignoring UN resolutions and International Court of Justice judgments.

Taken together, ICJ judgments and UN Resolutions, affirm, indeed insist, that Israel must immediately withdraw from its illegal occupation of Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem and that Palestinians should exercise their right to self-determination.   (The trump plan makes no mention of the West Bank or East Jerusalem.). Craig Mokhiber – international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official – in Mondoweiss sums up the legal position thus:

What’s more, the Security Council derives all its powers from the UN Charter. That Charter, as a treaty, is a part of international law- not above it. As such, the Council is bound by the rules of international law, including and especially the highest, so-called jus cogens and erga omnes rules, like self-determination and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.  Its blatant disregard for the findings of the ICJ on these matters reveals the degree to which many of the terms of this resolution are in fact unlawful and ultra vires (beyond the authority of the Council).

Infantilising Palestinians

The 20-point Trump plan is primarily concerned with ensuring the security of Israel, and also of Egypt (point 16). The entire document ignores, does not even mention, that Israel is in illegal occupation of Gaza so the real question should be how Israel might be contained and brought back to legality. But the plan allows for no historical context, its sole concern is to tidy-up Gaza so Israel can securely be the dominant force in the region – though none of this is explicitly said; and the strip be readied for inward, international, capitalist investment. There is no suggestion that Israel should pay, in whole or in part, for the decimation it has visited upon Gaza and its people.

 An International Stabilisation Force (ISF) is to be formed (point 13 of the plan). It will be responsible to the unelected, colonial-type Board of Peace. Here the ‘ISF will work with Israel – read that again: ‘with Israel’ – and Egypt to help secure border areas…’.  Palestinians have no role apart from giving up their weapons and being part of a ‘vetted’ Palestinian police force (if they pass the vetting process).

And aid is still not getting into Gaza in sufficient quantities despite Trump’s plan at point 8 insisting that ‘Entry of distribution and aid in the Gaza Strip will proceed without interference…’ Israel nevertheless continues to restrict entry of vital supplies. A minimum of 600 lorries a day is required, 200 or so may get through. Trump is seemingly unable to alter this. Or chooses not to.

The Israeli air-force attacks Gaza daily; and ground incursions by the IDF continue. On 21 November UN confirmed that ‘UNICEF says 67 children have been killed during the ceasefire [and] 280 Palestinian deaths and 672 injuries reported since the pause began.

That there is a notional ceasefire will be no comfort to the parent of an IDF-murdered child, or the child of a murdered parent, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, killed one-by-one, or all together, to know that the overall number of attacks are less than they were before the ceasefire was announced.   

Israel continues to attack Lebanon and Syria daily. But somehow that is not to trouble us, as it appears not to trouble Trump.

It is only after training, after reform, that Palestinian entities, including the Palestinian Authority (PA), may be deemed capable of passing muster to, perhaps, step upon a pathway that could eventually lead to the attainment of self-determination and statehood. Perhaps.

…if the Palestinian Authority reforms itself “faithfully” and Gaza’s reconstruction advances, the “conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood [Point 19 of the resolution].”   

But who is to judge that a requisite standard has been reached? That task falls to the Trump-chaired, Trump inspired, Board of Peace charged as it is with ‘oversight and supervision’ (point 9 of the plan) of the peace process. Here, likely as not, that well-connected doyen of international affairs and acclaimed peace-monger, Tony Blair, is likely to be asked to be a member of the Board, there to offer his perspective on matters of moment. The Board, a semi-colonial entity, has arrogated to itself the powers that properly belong to Palestinians, and Palestinian controlled entities.

Point 12 claims that ‘No-one will be forced to leave Gaza’. Gazans will be free to leave and free to return. ‘We will encourage people to stay…to build a better Gaza.’ At point 16, ‘Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza. The IDF will gradually withdraw, handing over to the ISF save for a ‘security perimeter presence that will remain until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terrorist threat’.

Is it to be believed that, given Israel’s Greater Israel ambitions, its rooted refusal to countenance an independent Palestinian state and its current and continuing violations of the formally agreed ceasefire, that these aspects of the plan will ever come to fruition?

Unbelievable

There is virtually nothing in the ‘peace’ agreement that inspires confidence. As Israel has already demonstrated, it adheres to the plan, virtually not at all.  The plan, founded as it is on illegality and bad faith, will collapse; and prove to be the vehicle that brings still more suffering to Palestinians in the entirety of the Occupied Territories, along with the populations of Lebanon and Syria. Israel’s intent to be a regional hegemon is being enacted. The Trump plan won’t alter that. By implication, probably does not want to.

It surely is completely clear that at this moment there are few grounds for hope for Palestine/Israel.  Some of those reasons are sketched out above. In addition, too many states and international actors fail to take, or take only weakly, punitive measures against Israel. Until that changes, until Israel hurts as the result of concerted, widespread state action that causes Israel pain, by sanctions, by being ostracised internationally, by a failing economy, by the cancellation of economic and trade agreements and more, Israel will not shift. Cannot shift, so immersed is it in its own infamy. 

The UK stands especially guilty in sustaining Israel, not least because of its historic role in creating the situation in the first place.

Israel has debased itself, so mired itself in evil that it has lost sight of moral imperatives – it is aspect blind. It looks in the mirror, but cannot see the grotesque image that confronts it.

Perhaps a ray of sunshine breaking through the gloom

On Wednesday September 18, the General Assembly of the United Nations, ‘a body unconstrained by the U.S. veto,’ endorsed the findings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and declared that the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza is unlawful and must end entirely.  UNGA declared that Israel must immediately comply with the provisional measures of the ICJ issued by the court in the genocide case brought against Israel by South Africa. 

One-hundred-and-twenty-four states voted for the resolution, fourteen voted against, forty-three abstained.

Shamefully, the UK was one of the abstentions.

Changes the political weather

The vote is not binding, but, arguably, it changes the political weather, especially when one takes account of the points made by Craig Mokhiber in Mondoweiss from which below is extensively drawn. His article is well worth reading in full. The Uniting for Peace procedure in particular offers some hope that the vice-like grip of the veto-wielding states on the Security Council can be neutralised. From Mondoweiss:

The resolution was adopted in an Emergency Special Session under “Uniting for Peace”, a UN procedure that gives enhanced powers to the General Assembly when the Security Council fails to act (usually, in this case, due to a U.S. veto). Thus, this is not an ordinary UNGA resolution, and the law that it cites is indeed binding, even if the resolution itself cannot command states to act. 

The resolution puts Israel on notice that it must completely end its occupation and apartheid within twelve months or face further consequences.

The resolution calls on Switzerland to convene, within six months, an extraordinary Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention on measures to enforce the convention in Palestine. It also decided to convene an international conference under UN auspices in the coming months to address the implementation of the many UN resolutions on Palestine of which Israel is in breach. 

The resolution mandates a report from the UN Secretary-General in three months’ time on the implementation of the resolution, and decides to keep the matter under UNGA review, so that it does not become dead letter. 

Organisations and states are getting behind the Uniting for Peace (UfP) initiative. Taken together, the measures set out above have the potential to generate momentum, gathering pace and support as it moves forward. Not to the exclusion of other initiatives, local, national and international, but in addition to.

UfP potentially opens up an additional pathway – better, a highway – leading to the liberation of Palestine and Palestinians. It’s a highway we will need to construct as we travel along it.