The official overseeing US President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan for Gaza on Wednesday criticised Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian territory and warned that the alternative to the US proposal was another war. Addressing the UN Security Council, Board of Peace high representative Nikolay Mladenov said the 20-point plan had not stalled and “has moved from the negotiating table to the engineering table”.
Mladenov said Hamas had agreed to the proposal’s key provision to disarm and hand Gaza over to civilian rule. But he said Israel’s continuing strikes since last October’s ceasefire were still killing Palestinians, though in smaller numbers, and meant people in Gaza could not feel the conflict was ending.
“After three years of war and 20 years of military operations, I ask, will another strike on a munitions depot stop Hamas from rearming or tightening its grip on Gaza?” Mladenov said. “It will not. It only delays the demilitarization that would happen” and obstructs the transfer to a civilian government. A recent US deal with Hamas to disarm had been seen as a possible breakthrough to end the war, which was triggered by the group’s deadly October 7, 2023, attacks in southern Israel.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his forces will not withdraw from their current positions in Gaza until Hamas hands over all its weapons. Mladenov said that at a meeting last week with Netanyahu and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, “we went through his government’s concerns one by one and narrowed the areas that still require technical work”. Israel’s deputy UN ambassador, Noa Furman, repeated his country’s commitment to Trump’s plan, but said it could not succeed while Hamas remained armed. He said Israel was working closely with the US to secure Hamas’ disarmament. US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz said concerns about the plan were being addressed and Hamas’ disarmament would be judged by its actions.
Mladenov warned about the gap between the roadmap and the reality on the ground, saying that if the war resumed there would be no roadmap to return to and nothing left to rebuild. “That would not be a setback,” he said. “it would be a point of no return for everyone.” He said political will was needed to bridge the differences and that the choice was clear: “A Gaza disarmed, rebuilt and reconnected to the world. Or a Gaza rearmed, divided and in rubble, with a radicalized generation raised inside it and the next war already on the horizon.” On the Palestinian side, he said the Trump plan offered a “credible pathway to a political horizon” and a two-state solution to the decades-old conflict, which Netanyahu strongly opposes.
With PTI Inputs
– Ends