•US President Donald Trump (R) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel today hailed Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan after its endorsement by the UN Security Council, as Hamas rejected the resolution which calls for the deployment of an international force in the Palestinian territory.
The United Nations Security Council voted yesterday in favour of a US-drafted resolution bolstering President Trump’s plan for the Gaza Strip — which has allowed a fragile ceasefire to hold between Israel and Hamas since October 10, reports AFP.
The peace plan notably authorises the creation of an international force that would work with Israel and Egypt and newly-trained Palestinian police to help secure border areas and demilitarise Gaza.
Following the vote, Palestinians living in Gaza embraced a chance for life to improve, but had little faith that Israel would comply.
“Any international decision that benefits the Palestinians now is welcome. The important thing is that the war ends,” said 39-year-old Saeb Al-Hassanat, who lives in a school sheltering displaced people in central Gaza.
“It doesn’t matter who rules us. We welcome international administration of Gaza,” he told our correspondent, but added that “without strong pressure from the US, Israel will not comply with any decision, and the Security Council resolution will remain worthless.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office hailed Trump’s plan today, saying it would lead to “peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarisation, disarmament and the deradicalisation of Gaza”.
On X, Netanyahu’s office said the plan would also “lead to further integration of Israel and its neighbours as well as expansion of Abraham Accords,” under which a few Arab countries have normalised ties with Israel.
There were 13 votes in favour of the text and none against, with Russia and China both abstaining but not deploying their veto as permanent members.
‘In God’s hands’
The Gaza Strip has been largely reduced to rubble after two years of fighting, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Rawia Abbas, who lives in a partially destroyed house in Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, said that conditions in the territory remained dire despite the ceasefire.
“We still have no food, no water and no homes. Winter has begun and people’s conditions are catastrophic. My young children stand in line for hours to get a gallon of water and a coupon for some food,” the 40-year-old told our correspondent.
“Now we are in God’s hands.”
Trump posted on social media that the vote would lead to “further peace all over the world”.
But Hamas, which is excluded by the resolution from any governance role in Gaza, said it did not meet Palestinians’ “political and humanitarian demands and rights”.
In a statement, the Islamist militant group decried the establishment of an international force and said the resolution imposes “an international trusteeship on the Gaza Strip, which our people, its forces, and its constituent groups reject”.
The peace plan authorises the creation of an International Stabilisation Force that is mandated to work on the “permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups”, protecting civilians and securing humanitarian aid corridors.
‘Day after’ in Gaza
The Palestinian foreign ministry, based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the Security Council vote affirmed the Palestinian people’s “right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state” and the unimpeded flow of aid into Gaza.
In a statement on X, it “stressed the urgent need to immediately implement this resolution on the ground”.
In convoluted language, the resolution does mention a possible future Palestinian state — an eventuality firmly and repeatedly rejected by Israel.
Once the Palestinian Authority has carried out requested reforms and the rebuilding of Gaza is under way, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” the text says.
It also authorises the formation of a “Board of Peace”, a transitional governing body for Gaza — which Trump would theoretically chair — with a mandate running until the end of 2027.
The resolution also calls for the resumption of humanitarian aid deliveries at scale through the UN, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent.
In Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the Security Council’s decision a “historic diplomatic achievement… that can and must lead us to the ‘day after’ in Gaza and throughout the region”.
