{"id":579837,"date":"2025-11-19T06:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/579837\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T06:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T06:12:20","slug":"how-the-un-gaza-resolution-creates-new-foreign-mandate-over-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/579837\/","title":{"rendered":"How the UN Gaza resolution creates new foreign \u2018mandate\u2019 over Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"

An international force will use \u201call necessary measures to carry out its mandate\u201d in Gaza, a newly approved United Nations Security Council resolution<\/a> stipulates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The resolution puts US<\/a> President Donald Trump in control of the Palestinian enclave, with multinational troops in an “International Stabilisation Force (ISF)” overseeing his 20-point plan for its future.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The term \u201cmandate\u201d is all too familiar in the context of foreign involvement in the affairs of Palestinians<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a classic colonial scheme which totally disregards the rights and aspirations of the indigenous people,\u201d Avi Shlaim, the British-Israeli historian, tells Middle East Eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this sense, it is comparable to the British<\/a> Mandate for Palestine.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch<\/p>\n

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\n Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters<\/p>\n

Helena Cobban, author of the book Understanding Hamas: And Why That Matters, said that on one level, “mandate” is just a technical term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut for everyone throughout West Asia, it carries heavy historical baggage,\u201d she told MEE.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe post-WW1 mandates awarded to Britain and France in formerly Ottoman areas were predicated on the inherently colonialist assumption that the peoples of those regions somehow weren’t \u2018ready\u2019 for self-governance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost a hundred years later, global powers are once again taking charge of Palestinian territory for what is described as a \u201ctransitional\u201d period.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Resolution 2803, approved on Monday by a vote of 13-0 with two abstentions, outlined a plan for a \u201cboard of peace\u201d to oversee multinational troops, Palestinian technocrats and a local police force for a period of two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The resolution has been rejected by Hamas and several other Palestinian factions, but is notably backed by the Palestinian Authority (PA).\u00a0<\/p>\n

It makes a vague non-committal reference to \u201cPalestinian self-determination and statehood\u201d, if a number of conditions are met.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

‘This is a classic colonial scheme which totally disregards the rights and aspirations of the indigenous people’<\/p>\n

– Avi Shlaim, historian<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt is putting conditioning on something that is a right: the right to self-determination,\u201d Daniel Levy, a British-Israeli analyst and former peace negotiator, told MEE.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s turned the upholder of international law, the UN, into a body that undermines that.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to 13 members of the UN Security Council, the text was endorsed by a number of Muslim-majority and Arab states, including Egypt<\/a>, the UAE<\/a>, Qatar<\/a>, Saudi Arabia<\/a>, Turkey<\/a>, and Indonesia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Russia<\/a> and China<\/a> abstained from the vote. Though Russia called the resolution “colonial”, importantly, the pair did not use their vetoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Levy said that PA support for the plan provided cover for Muslim-majority and Arab states to back it, which in turn provided cover for Russia and China not to veto.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you had the Muslim-majority states supporting it, no one was going to break ranks,\u201d Levy said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reluctance to deploy<\/p>\n

Hamas rejected the resolution, stating that it did not accept the notion of disarmament and that the text failed to meet the rights and demands of Palestinians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s unwillingness to disarm creates a problem for multinational troops.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The likelihood of international peacekeeping forces deploying to Gaza to take part in destroying \u201cterror\u201d infrastructure, as the resolution posits, while Hamas is still present, is low.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Shlaim noted that Israel<\/a>\u2019s military had \u201cfailed to disarm Hamas after two years of relentless bombardment\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo how will an international body do it? And what Arab country will want to do Israel\u2019s dirty work for it?\u201d he asked. \u201cThis is a plan for indefinite Israeli control of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

Full text of the US resolution for Gaza approved by the UN Security Council<\/p>\n

Read More \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n

Cobban agreed that there would be reluctance on the part of regional actors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the long-vaunted Israeli military was unable to vanquish the Palestinian resistance in Gaza, then no planner in the general staff of any of the Arab or Muslim militaries contemplating joining the ISF will want their military to try to do this,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hamas has expressed some willigness to roll back its weapons and forces: it has alluded to decommissioning weapons and folding its capabilities into the military of an independent Palestinian state.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cobban notes that this is the norm for anti-colonial fighting forces through the decolonisation process through history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With the ongoing impasse over disarmament, implementation of the resolution remains uncertain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But in any case, the fact that the UN Security Council rubber-stamped a Trump-administered plan with the partial blessing of Israel is highly significant.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cobban questioned why so many members of the Security Council \u201ccaved so completely\u201d, and why Russia and China failed to use their vetoes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happened at the UNSC yesterday has brought infamy to the United Nations itself,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe organisation and everything it represents is now at a crisis point from which it may take a long time to recover, if indeed it can ever do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An international force will use \u201call necessary measures to carry out its mandate\u201d in Gaza, a newly approved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-579837","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115574888730281883","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}