When the UN Security Council approved his ceasefire plan for Gaza last week, US President Donald Trump celebrated the vote as “a moment of true historic proportions.”
Supporters also hailed the move as a breakthrough that provides a UN mandate for Trump’s vision of how to move past the ceasefire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war.
Nevertheless, this shared sentiment of optimism could prove to be premature amid the continuing Israeli bombing of Gaza and the increasing violence in the Occupied West Bank, which are tearing the already hazy ceasefire apart.
The US-drafted UN resolution contains Trump’s 20-point ceasefire plan and envisions a “Board of Peace” to oversee its implementation. It calls for an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to enter, demilitarise, and govern Gaza for a duration of at least two years.
The resolution underscores the importance of the full resumption of the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Strip in cooperation with the board and in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles.
This should be done through cooperating organisations including the United Nations and efforts should be made to ensure that such aid is not diverted by armed groups.
Under the resolution, the ISF will work with Israel and Egypt, along with a newly trained and vetted Palestinian police force, to help secure border areas and ensure the process of permanently disarming non-state armed groups, including Hamas.
Notably, the resolution says that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) undergoes reforms and the redevelopment of the shattered Gaza Strip advances, the conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
The resolution passed with 13 votes in favour and zero votes against, with Russia and China, either of which could have vetoed it, abstaining. Algeria, the only Arab member of the council, decided to vote in favour of the text.
However, for the vision set out in the resolution to be realised, it will need to move in the right direction and avoid the stumbling blocks that have made all previous Middle East peace efforts stall or stumble.
Trump set out his peace plan for Gaza in October and promised that it would not only mark the end of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict but also that the whole “Middle East has come together for the first time in 3,000 years.”
His boast was reminiscent of declarations made by former US presidents since the US-sponsored Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1979 through the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel and Trump’s own efforts to push the Abraham Accords between Israel and other states of the region in his first term in office.
Yet, Trump’s peace plan has many blind spots, and the regional and world backing it has received is less a reward for the US president’s “big and beautiful” Gaza peace plan than for his geopolitical nous.
Regardless of the enthusiasm for Trump’s push for stabilisation and reconstruction in Gaza, now trumpeted as a peace plan, this effort does not seem to have much chance of success.
Indeed, the peace plan has been tempered on both sides by an awareness that tenuous ceasefire deals even if they are endorsed by the UN will not necessarily lead to sustainable peace agreements.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the UN resolution, saying that it would lead to “peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarisation, disarmament, and the deradicalisation of Gaza.”
“This will lead to the further integration of Israel and its neighbours as well as expansion of [the] Abraham Accords,” a statement by his office released on social media said, referring to the agreements under which some Arab nations normalised their ties with Israel during Trump’s first term in office.
On the other hand, Hamas rejected the resolution, saying that it fails to meet Palestinians’ rights and demands and that it seeks to impose an international trusteeship on the enclave that the Palestinians and resistance factions oppose.
“Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality and turns it into a party to the conflict in favour of the occupation,” the group said.
On the ground in Gaza the situation remains dire. More than a month after Hamas and Israel agreed to Trump’s ceasefire deal, violence, house demolitions, and shortages of food and life-saving goods persist.
Despite the ceasefire deal, aerial and artillery bombardment, gunfire, and the destruction of homes by the Israeli army continue. Eight Gazans are still being killed per day by Israeli soldiers on average, according to the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.
Hamas accused Israel of using the ceasefire “as a cover to continue its genocide against Gaza’s residents.” It warned that Israel is maintaining conditions in Gaza that “prevent any recovery from over 25 months of humanitarian catastrophe.”
Meanwhile, violence has increased across the Occupied West Bank, which is administrated by the PA and is home to 2.7 million Palestinians and has long been central to plans for a future Palestinian state.
Dozens of new incidents have occurred in recent days across much of the Occupied Territories as Israeli settlers step up broader efforts to intimidate and harm Palestinian communities and force them to leave.
With international attention focused on Gaza, the violence in the West Bank has surged. A UN report released earlier this month found that Israeli settlers had launched at least 264 attacks in October, the largest number since the UN began tracking incidents in 2006.
The violence has been coupled with the Israeli government’s seizure of more land in the Occupied West Bank for settlement expansions and its expelling of more residents from Palestinian refugee camps.
Israeli security officials were cited in a report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on 18 November warning that the West Bank is “on the verge of an explosion.”
The situation is dire and threatens to unsettle the PA and give Israel the chance to tighten its grip over the Palestinian Territories. This would undermine efforts to push a reformed PA to become a key partner in Trump’s peace plan and a pillar of a two-state solution.
One early sign of the failure of Trump’s plan is Saudi Arabia’s declared reluctance to join the Abraham Accords. Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman told reporters after he met with Trump at the White House last week that while the Kingdom wants to be part of the accords, “we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path to a two-state solution.”
Ahead of Bin Salman’s visit, Trump hinted that he wanted the Saudis to agree to normalise relations with Israel and sign the Abraham Accords, which he had earlier expected would expand the number of signatories to agreements that many believe were the spark for Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel.
The oil-rich Kingdom’s rebuff will likely prove a major obstacle not only to achieving Trump’s goal of bringing comprehensive peace to the Middle East but also to stabilisation and rebuilding efforts in Gaza.
Bin Salman managed to secure a number of agreements with Trump to boost bilateral strategic ties in exchange for promises of a trillion-dollar Saudi investment in the US, but he did not give Trump what he expected about normalisation with Israel despite the latter’s repeated suggestions to the contrary.
The regional and international support for the UN resolution also does not seem to be immune to the push and pull dynamics that usually play out in international diplomacy.
China and Russia’s refraining from vetoing the UN resolution on Trump’s peace plan is a case in point of what seems to be a trade-off in diplomatic terms.
While the Trump administration promised not to levy long-promised semiconductor tariffs on China, shelving a centrepiece of Trump’s economic agenda, Washington is also quietly working to end the war in Ukraine in a way that would require Kyiv to cede land and sovereignty to Russia.
The stakeholders have yet to agree on key steps that will ensure the implementation of the UN resolution. These include setting up the “Board of Peace” that will oversee the ISF and the local security force that will police Gaza for a period of two years.
The plan is overshadowed by uncertainties, especially about the transitional arrangements, primarily the membership of the “Peace Board” and the ISF’s composition and mandate.
There is no greater ambiguity than that about the Palestinian “committee of technocrats” that will be tasked with the day-to-day running of Gaza under the plan. Doubts abound about finding enough Palestinians prepared to be seen as “stooges” for Trump and his Board and guide the 2.2 million population of Gaza.
Similar scepticism surrounds the proposed local police force for post-war Gaza. The resolution calls for the force to ensure “the process of demilitarising the Gaza Strip” and “the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”
Hamas has reportedly made a counter proposal that demands an Israeli withdrawal, a new administrative structure in Gaza, and the immediate start of reconstruction.
Few countries have shown any real appetite to take part in the ISF or to participate in the process of demilitarisation of the enclave.
These are some of the obstacles that will continue to impede progress on Trump’s Gaza peace plan. The most significant, however, is the lack of a clear path to achieve the goal of creating a two-state solution.
In the long and torturous endeavour to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, such steps have all been taken before and have failed. Now, we are back to square one in the bewildering maze of the Middle East.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 27 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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