The United States has taken its Gaza plan to the U.N. Security Council and is now pushing for formal United Nations authorization of a sweeping, multi-year international force that would govern security in the Strip through at least 2027.
The move, which the administration says is necessary to implement President Donald Trump’s 20 plan which represents one of Washington’s most significant decisions in years to place the United Nations at the center of a major Middle East security framework.
In a statement, the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said the draft was written with input from Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. The Mission said the goal is to “bring to fruition President Trump’s historic 20 Point Comprehensive Plan,” which was supported by more than 20 countries at a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Oct. 13.
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Negotiations with Security Council members began in the first week of November to “stand up the International Stabilization Force and begin a stable, secure, peaceful and prosperous future for Palestinians in Gaza, free of Hamas.” The Mission added that the ceasefire remains “fragile” and delays “have grave, tangible, and entirely avoidable consequences for Palestinians in Gaza.”
New details reported by Axios reveal the scope of the U.S. proposal. According to a draft labeled “sensitive but unclassified,” the resolution would establish an International Security Force in Gaza for at least two years, with a mandate extending through the end of 2027 and the possibility of extensions. A U.S. official told Axios the plan is to vote on the resolution within weeks and deploy the first troops by January, describing the force as “an enforcement force and not a peacekeeping force.”
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Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Fox News Digital the U.S. went to the U.N. because several states Washington hopes will contribute troops require a Security Council mandate.
“The decision to go to the United Nations was driven principally by the request of participating states, states that the United States hopes will participate in the stabilization force who need a U.N. mandate to help them politically, to dispatch forces eventually to Gaza. So that’s the real origin of this, to enable, to give a political umbrella to participating states to play a role in the stabilization force.”
Satloff said that although Israel has voiced real concerns about U.N. involvement, it understands why Washington believes the mandate is essential. “There’s no doubt that involving the United Nations has its own complications, and I think that the Israelis have been pretty vocal about this. But they also appreciate that the United States believe it needs this sort of endorsement for the 20-point plan to move forward. The Israelis want to make sure that these complications don’t overwhelm the benefits of the plan. Which is a legitimate concern.”
He warned that the plan faces major challenges but urged against pessimism. “There are enormous obstacles to the implementation of the entire plan. The U.N. aspect of it is just one of them. We’re already seeing some fundamental disagreement over, say, the definition of disarmament, which could derail the whole effort. Now, I think one has to be hopeful. The opportunity here is huge. The desire to find solutions among the states that are committed to this is real and serious. So, while it’s totally legitimate to recognize the significant obstacles, I don’t think that we should get negative about the prospects here.”
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Anne Bayefsky, Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and President of Human Rights Voices, offered a starkly different view. Bayefsky told Fox News Digital: “Incredibly, the United States has subjected its plans for Gaza to U.N. authorization and oversight. Arab countries claimed U.N. involvement was ‘necessary’ for them to participate and support the Gaza international force. That was a lie and blatant power grab. The proof is in the text which could have been a one-liner noting, with approval, a non-U. N. initiative. Instead, the resolution is a long-list of orders doing enormous harm to Israeli national security, sovereignty and right of self-defense, hamstringing America’s range of action by a web of agencies and involvement antithetical to U.S. interests and peace.”
She said the move is “an about-face for American foreign policy on the United Nations and the Arab-Israeli conflict,” and argued that the United Nations “has repeatedly demonstrated its antisemitic bias, lack of good faith and support for Palestinian aggression.” Bayefsky added that the draft “fails to condemn Hamas” and “refuses to acknowledge and affirm Israel’s U.N. Charter right of self-defense before granting the treacherous U.N. unprecedented influence,” calling the omission “devastating to the prospects of real peace.”
Russia, however, has countered with its own draft resolution that strikes a profoundly different tone. Moscow’s draft demands an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Gaza, and the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping mission under the Secretary-General’s authority and with the consent of the parties involved.
The draft also says it reaffirms the 1967 borders and East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state and insists that Gaza’s reconstruction must take place under Palestinian leadership and sovereignty, not through externally managed institutions. Unlike the American proposal, it contains no provisions for demilitarization or interim foreign governance, instead centering on “humanitarian relief and international law.”
Fox News Digital was referred by the White House and State Department to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. for comment.
