FACT SHEET: The UN Security Council Got It Wrong on Gaza. Here’s What Movements Need to Know.

The UN Security Council’s passage of Resolution 2803 cements a shift in Israel’s Gaza genocide, the U.S. role in enabling the genocide, the weakening of the UN and international law, and the complicity of other states in the Middle East and the world.

Key takeaways

• The UN Security Council vote has dire and far-reaching implications for Palestinians in Gaza, for the UN as an institution, and for international law itself.
• The U.S. has taken primary ownership of the Gaza genocide, the current phase of the colonial occupation of the territory and and efforts to remove Palestinians.
• The resolution confers UN legitimacy and cover to ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
• The resolution aims to marshal support from a wide range of states, in a counter to the growing isolation of Israel–especially in the International Court of Justice, UN General Assembly, and other international settings.

Features of this new situation

• The Security Council resolution gives UN authority to Trump’s plan to create and command an international armed force to implement continued colonial control of Gaza, and does so without any reference to the UN Charter’s Chapter VII–the only vehicle for Council approval of military action. It thus sets a dangerous precedent for future UN decisions that threaten international law, UN resolutions, and the UN Charter itself.

• The U.S. is moving into political and operational control of the Gaza Strip. Trump himself is supposed to become the head of the “Board of Peace,” which is to be the “transitional” authority in complete control of Gaza. The U.S. is already directing the Civil-Military Coordination Center–which is the military, diplomatic, and aid command and control hub for Gaza, is located in Israeli territory and excludes Palestinians entirely. There are around 200 U.S. troops and an unknown number of Israeli troops at the Center, (along with unknown numbers of other international troops).
• Daily, deadly Israeli attacks continue in Gaza despite the declared ceasefire.
• Israel continues to impede humanitarian aid to Gaza, only allowing three crossings into the territory for the delivery of aid at the moment. Israel is escalating its obstruction of and attacks on UNRWA — the UN’s primary agency for aiding Palestinians — and the ICJ has argued that “Israel is obliged to lift [those] restrictions.”
• The “Board of Peace” is supposed to create an international, armed “stabilization” force in Gaza — “ISF” — whose composition will be approved by Israel. Israeli officials have declared that Turkish forces will not be allowed, with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying that “Israel will determine which forces are unacceptable to us.” The ISF’s main mandate focuses on collaboration with Israeli and Egyptian military forces to “secure border areas” and disarm Hamas in Gaza.
• Despite the stated claim (in Trump’s 20-point plan appended to the resolution) that Palestinians will not be forced to leave Gaza, Israel’s operative policy remains to make Gaza unlivable so that Palestinians are compelled to leave. Moreover, Israel and the U.S. have been in talks with Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya about receiving displaced Palestinians. Further, Israel apparently chartered at least two planes carrying Palestinians from Gaza that transported them to South Africa without permission from the South African government and apparently without the knowledge of most of the passengers. As of the writing of this memo, Israel has re-opened the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, but only in one direction; Palestinians may exit Gaza, but they may not return.
• There is no reference in the “Peace Plan” to Palestinians’ right to self-determination, human rights, or how to make Gaza livable for Palestinians before and during any rehabilitation and reconstruction work that may take shape.

Crucially, whereas global opposition to the genocide from governments and people has succeeded in isolating Israel and the U.S., the successful passage of Security Council Resolution 2803 without dissent challenges and undermines this isolation at the diplomatic and inter-governmental level.

This is significant, because campaigns were beginning to make economic, political, and social impacts–especially for Israel, which was being pushed to also make new calculations in the areas of military and diplomatic strategy. The Chinese and Russian abstention on the resolution vote–instead of using their veto–and especially Algeria’s affirmative support for it, signal a rebuttal to South Africa’s pursuit of its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, to the ICJ’s rulings and General Assembly resolutions, to the initiatives of the Hague Group, and other global and national efforts to pressure governments to act against the genocide. 

These latest developments are continuations of the Abraham Accords, orchestrated by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner during the president’s first term, which set in motion the normalization of relations between Israel and a number of Arab states without requiring an end to Israel’s occupation. The agreements were advanced in the pursuit of a “new Middle East” characterized by massive arms sales, escalating military protection, and access to nuclear technology, all from the United States.

Recommendations

• Movement and civil society organizations must continue to demand an arms embargo against Israel, unrestricted aid for Palestinians in Gaza, and real accountability for Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention and other parts of international law.
• Organizations in the U.S. must continue to demand an end to Washington’s complicit role in the genocide, displacement, and forced removal of Palestinians in Gaza, starting with an end to arms transfers to Israel.

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