The United Nations, through its Security Council and with the backing of Arab states, is reviving the system of international trusteeship by adopting a United States draft resolution that imposes a Peace Council to administer the Gaza Strip. This council is granted an armed enforcement capability under its own mandate.
The objective of this Peace Council, equipped with military power, is the disarmament of the resistance, the destruction of its infrastructure—labelled in the resolution as “terrorist structures”—and the organisation of a long term Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. This withdrawal is subject to Israeli satisfaction regarding the level of systematic dismantling of the resistance inside Gaza, while guaranteeing the continuation of Israeli occupation over what the resolution calls the “security perimeter”.
This perimeter is left without any clear timetable or defined mechanism for termination, aside from the vague phrase that it “shall remain in place until Gaza is sufficiently secured against any renewed terrorist threat”. In effect, this grants “Israel” the authority to occupy parts of Gaza indefinitely.
Israeli Conditions Govern Withdrawal and Security Apparatus
The withdrawal arrangements are entirely conditional upon Israeli assessments. The Peace Council’s armed force is also required to operate in coordination with “Israel” and Egypt. Necessarily, the proposed Palestinian police force will be subordinated to the same structure, including the principle of coordinated work with “Israel”.
Trusteeship Imposed on the Entire Palestinian Authority
The resolution imposes trusteeship not merely on Gaza but on the full domain of the Palestinian Authority. It links the resumption of any political process to the PA’s implementation of required reforms and renders this political track uncertain.
The resolution states:
“After the faithful implementation of the Palestinian Authority’s reform program and progress in redeveloping Gaza, conditions may finally be available to shape a credible path toward self determination and the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
Even after meeting these conditions—PA implementation of the reforms and progress in Gaza’s redevelopment—the resumption of a political track remains speculative and non binding. The reference points for this track are the 2020 Trump Plan, commonly known as the “Deal of the Century”, which the PA rejected at the time, and the Saudi French proposal.
Despite all this, the Algerian ambassador to the UN, representing the Arab group and serving on the Council as a non permanent member, spoke of Arab amendments to the US draft, describing them as “essential amendments to ensure balance and fairness in the text”, highlighting the support of Arab and Islamic states and the Palestinian Authority for the resolution.
Arab Amendments Avoid the Core Issue: Liquidating Gaza’s Resistance
The Arab amendments do not touch the core of the American proposal regarding the liquidation of the resistance in Gaza, the consolidation of Israeli dominance over the Peace Council’s decisions and its attached armed force, or the structuring of a partial Israeli withdrawal based on Israeli convictions.
They instead focus primarily on adding language about a peace plan, self determination and a Palestinian state, but without binding commitments. These additions remain conditional upon Palestinian compliance with international guardianship mechanisms—mechanisms determined solely by “Israel”.
This renders the added language symbolic and cosmetic, designed to improve the Arab image while agreeing to a resolution that serves a shared Arab Israeli objective: the elimination of the resistance in Gaza.
Pakistan, now a non permanent member of the Security Council and one of the eight states that originally supported Trump’s plan, backs this resolution, as does Indonesia—one of the same eight states—and Turkey.
The Arab and Islamic Outcome: International Liquidation of Gaza’s Resistance
The most that the collective Arab and Islamic position has achieved is the liquidation of Gaza’s resistance through an international resolution. In this context, the resistance will be regionally and internationally isolated if it rejects this resolution—after two years of genocide against all Gazans and two years of extraordinary steadfastness by the besieged Gaza resistance.
This steadfastness had proven to Arab and Islamic governments that it was possible to reject surrender to Israeli extermination and refuse submission to American dominance. Yet the practical Arab and Islamic response to the genocide and the resistance’s endurance has been the opposite: a move toward eliminating the resistance and severing Gaza from the West Bank in exchange for halting the genocide.
The Process Has Been Clear Since Trump’s Proposal
Since Trump proposed his plan last September to halt the genocide in Gaza—and since its adoption by the eight Arab and Islamic states—the trajectory has been clear. His plan is the implementation reference for the Peace Council and its armed force under the US resolution now adopted by the Security Council.
Even with this clarity—namely, that Arab and Islamic positions oscillate between incapacity and complicity—several Arab and Islamic governments boasted of supporting the Palestinian people and confronting “Israel” during the genocide. Many personalities and entities promoted this self congratulatory narrative, as seen in Egyptian propaganda surrounding the “Sharm El Sheikh Conference”, or Saudi propaganda around the Saudi French initiative, or Turkish propaganda widely circulated within Arab and Islamist circles.
Notably, Turkey entered late into the mediation track, a sign of its role—secured by its own gains—in facilitating the imposition of the US plan upon the Palestinians.
Complicity Consolidated Through Support of the Security Council Resolution
Complicity is now confirmed through support for the Security Council resolution. The prevailing tendency among Arab and Islamic states appears to be a desire to dispose of the resistance in Palestine—well beyond Gaza—and to extricate the Palestinian question from serious attention. Securing American satisfaction and ending political “noise” matter more than Palestinian rights, wounds and suffering.
Revisiting the October Seventh Event and Its Political Consequences
With the retrospective reassessment of the October Seventh operation, due to the genocide committed by “Israel” and the resulting political consequences that strengthen the standing of ruling authorities in the Arab world—where authority and state are effectively synonymous—it becomes necessary to state that if not for the oscillation between incapacity and complicity, the current outcomes would never have taken this shape.
It is equally necessary to question the legitimacy of these successive ruling authorities, for they have failed over decades to establish national structures either reasonably free from American hegemony or capable of independent action.
This leads to the analytical conclusion that these states, under their successive authorities, remain in a condition resembling ongoing colonial subjugation, dependency and clientelism.
