The UN Security Council’s November 17, 2025, resolution, endorsing elements of Donald Trump’s peace plan and establishing a transitional “Board of Peace,” risks entrenching Palestinian vulnerability while offering Israel a mechanism to continue military operations under the guise of diplomacy.
Seth Ferris
This measure endorses elements of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan, authorizing a transitional “Board of Peace” (to be chaired by President Trump himself until at least 2027) and an International Stabilisation Force tasked with securing Gaza, including enforcing demilitarization of Palestinian groups, and overseeing reconstruction.
The text further envisions, in carefully hedged language, that by following Palestinian Authority reforms and progress in Gaza’s redevelopment, “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
It really must give the locals confidence that the so-called “Board of Peace,” which will be headed and chaired by Trump, with other members and heads of state to be announced, including one former Prime Minister Tony Blair—who has done so much to bring war and instability to the region during his tenure as the UK’s Prime Minister.
Yeah, right…..
Naturally such leadership would erode rather than build trust among Palestinians and other stakeholders from the onset. The description of Blair as one “who has done so much to bring war and instability to the region during his tenure as the UK’s Prime Minister” directly alludes to his role in the 2003 Iraq invasion (widely criticized in the Arab world and among Palestinians for contributing to regional destabilization).
The resolution’s framework and language risk entrenching vulnerability for Palestinians while providing Israel with well-proven mechanisms to renew military operations at will
Black Humor
This is not a neutral historical recounting but a pointed, understated critique that highlights the absurdity of appointing figures associated with past Middle East conflicts and policy failure to a body ostensibly dedicated to peace. Blair’s role remains part of the broader plan, even if not reiterated in the exact resolution text, but it is hoped that such commentary will motivate our readers to recognize the profound irony—appointing architects of prior interventions to “foster peace” in a deeply scarred region.
We must not forget the 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the United States and the United Kingdom under President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, has been subject to extensive criticism on multiple grounds. Official inquiries such as the UK’s Chilcot Report (2016) made it clear that they knew they were starting an illegal war based on the false justification for the war (the imaginary “Weapons of Mass Destruction”), its legality (or rather lack thereof), planning and execution, and long-term consequences.
Ambiguous and Conditional Language
The UN resolution’s language on statehood is notably ambiguous and conditional. It may sound good in theory, but anyone close to the conflict must realize this is just more rhetoric and shows that the US, with its disdain for the UN, is back to its old tricks. Almost everything that could have moved the peace process forward, leading to a two-state solution as outlined in the Camp David Accords and other milestones towards a solution, has been vetoed or derailed by the US in its one-sided unconditional support for the Zionist State and its leadership.
For Palestinians in Gaza, enduring the aftermath of a level of devastation unseen in 80 years, there is no cause for celebration. Absent enforceable provisions to address core asymmetries, this measure risks serving as temporary cover for an ongoing genocide, deferring accountability until the ceasefire fractures—potentially ushering in a return to large-scale operations, not solely confined to Gaza. The United States, reverting to familiar patterns, has once again positioned the UN as a tool for managed impasse rather than equitable peace.
It would be suicidal for the Palestinian side to disarm, and even if it did, what difference would it make? A pretext will easily be found for Israel to again “mow the grass” and pick up where it left off in finding a Final Solution to the Palestinian problem, as in the same Final Solution that Hitler sought for the Jewish Question.
“Mowing the grass” (Hebrew: kisuh deiqa) is a strategic metaphor employed in Israeli security discourse to describe a policy of periodic, limited military operations against adversaries in Gaza, primarily Hamas and associated groups. Coined and analyzed by scholars such as Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir in publications from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, the term likens Palestinian militant capabilities (e.g., rocket arsenals and tunnels) to grass that perpetually regrows and must be periodically “cut back” through targeted strikes, airstrikes, or ground incursions.
It does sound good, at least in theory, that US, Qatari, Egyptian, and Turkish mediators will attempt to get both sides to agree to what Trump called a “strong, durable, and everlasting peace,” but the fly in the ointment, or, perhaps a better description, the elephant in the room, is the total failure of Israel to ever adhere to any ceasefire or peace agreement over the last eight decades.
One only needs to look at what it is now doing in Southern Lebanon for a recent example of why Israel is not to be trusted, with evacuation orders in tandem with recent bombings.
Protracted History
On the surface, this appears as a commendable effort to consolidate the fragile ceasefire brokered last month and to chart a course toward stability. Yet, viewed against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s protracted history — marked by repeated violations of UN resolutions such as No. 242 (1967) and No. 338 (1973), which called for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and the persistent non-implementation of the two-state solution affirmed in numerous General Assembly and Security Council texts — the resolution evokes a familiar pattern of lofty rhetoric unmoored from enforceable commitments.
One cannot help but note the ironic parallel to the British Mandate for Palestine (1922–1948), which similarly promised facilitation of a Jewish national home while ostensibly safeguarding Arab rights, only to culminate in partition, withdrawal, and open conflict and ethnic cleansing upon Britain’s departure in 1948.
Here, too, an external transitional administration is proposed amid profound asymmetries: Israel’s reiterated opposition to Palestinian statehood (reaffirmed by Prime Minister Netanyahu on the eve of the vote), the resolution’s ambiguous timelines and conditional phrasing on self-determination, and the force’s mandate to enforce demilitarization — a demand aligned closely with Israeli security concerns but silent on a lasting peace deal, are all dark portents of what the real plan is.
For all practical purposes, the occupation, expansion of illegal settlements, and Israeli violence against Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, will continue, though it may at least be held in abeyance for now. The rights of the poor Palestinians, a people that don’t exist or have no right to exist, based on the Israeli logic, will end up with even a shorter end of the stick.
Meanwhile, Arab and Muslim states, in exchange for troop contributions, initially insisted on strengthened references to Palestinian rights but yielded to watered-down concessions in the final draft.
Credit must be given to Russia and China for having abstained, as they saw the resolutions for their true colors. They dismissed it as a superficial stopgap lacking substance or genuine multilateral oversight—more an instrument of subterfuge.
Israel has impunity
To those who have a bit of knowledge of the conflict’s dynamics and its’ history, this initiative — notwithstanding its humanitarian framing — risks paving yet another proverbial road with good intentions that, history suggests, leads not to resolution but to delay.
Such half-baked measures often serve as diplomatic ploys, providing temporary international legitimacy while deferring accountability. In the absence of sincere and binding mechanisms to counter Israel’s stated rejection of Palestinian sovereignty, the fragile truce may soon fracture, potentially restarting large-scale military operations in Gaza and beyond, with profound human costs for Palestinians and the region.
In theory, the resolution sounds promising; in practice, it reflects a recurring cycle wherein rhetorical advancements mask entrenched imbalances, underscoring the United States’ selective engagement with UN processes when aligned with its strategic priorities—with an Israel-can-do-no-wrong stance—as always!
The resolution’s framework and language risk entrenching vulnerability for Palestinians while providing Israel with well-proven mechanisms to renew military operations at will—and most certainly many of those key players on the Board of Peace will be only too willing to turn a blind eye. The international community, and particularly those who drafted and endorsed this text, owe the people of Gaza and the broader region more than aspirational rhetoric dressed as resolution.
Whether they intend to deliver it is, perhaps, the only question that truly matters. Those far from the conflict’s daily realities, or calloused by seeing the results on TV, no longer have emotions to deal with the unfairness of what is happening and is so well documented. They find in the resolution’s language a reassuring echo of past promises—reconstruction overseen by an international force, conditional references to self-determination, and the solemn invocation of “everlasting peace.”
Yet for Palestinians who have endured decades of similar declarations—each followed by settlement expansion, periodic military campaigns euphemistically termed “mowing the grass,” and the steady erosion of viable statehood, and now, fully fledged genocide—the document reads less as a breakthrough than as a sophisticated postponement.
Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs
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