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“The UN Security Council on Monday voted to adopt a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing President Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza and authorizing an international stabilization force for the Palestinian enclave…
“Hamas, in a statement, reiterated that it will not disarm and argued that its fight against Israel is legitimate resistance, potentially pitting the militant group against the international force authorized by the resolution…
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from right-wing members of his government, said on Sunday that Israel remained opposed to a Palestinian state and pledged to demilitarize Gaza ‘the easy way or the hard way.’” Reuters
The left is skeptical that the plan will bring peace to Gaza.
“The Board of Peace would be granted sovereign powers in Gaza. Palestinian sovereignty is left to the discretion of the Board, which alone would decide when Palestinians are ‘ready’ to govern themselves – perhaps in another 100 years?…
“This would be an overt return to the British Mandate of 100 years ago, with the only change being that the US would hold the mandate rather than Britain. If it weren’t so utterly tragic, it would be laughable.”
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Common Dreams
“Both Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, to name two countries much discussed as possible participants [in the International Stabilization Force], have signaled that they will not take part in the force because of the risk that their soldiers could wind up being asked to fight with Hamas… The question now is whether Mr. Trump and his administration, confronted with the difficulties still ahead, will have the wherewithal and staying power to see those plans through.”
David M. Halbfinger, New York Times
“There is only one way to curb Hamas’ remaining power in Gaza and force it to turn over arms: offer Gazans an alternative political future so promising that they turn against the militants en masse… Yet, the Trump plan contains only the vaguest reference to Palestinian aspirations for [a] state… Moderate Arabs won’t support an international stabilization force in Gaza unless the plan specifies that the final goal is a Palestinian state…
“The first son-in-law wants to rebuild a ‘New Gaza’ in the half of the strip still controlled by the Israel Defense Forces. Palestinians would be clustered in bubbles with new housing and schools. But they would be living under military rule, restricted in movement, and thus have very few economic prospects… Economic crumbs can’t resolve what is basically a political problem: defining the political future for all of Gaza — and the West Bank.”
Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer
“The plan for Gaza carries some echoes of another advanced decades ago by the United States. During the Vietnam War, the U.S. government funded and supported a plan by the South Vietnamese to relocate rural peasants to ‘strategic hamlets’ to isolate them from the influence of communist insurgents. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese were convinced that they would win the peasants’ support by improving their quality of life with access to medical care and schools…
“But the residents were miserable. And separating the insurgents from the civilians proved far harder than expected; a communist agent was accidentally made the overseer of the entire program. Roger Hilsman, then the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, ultimately called the effort ‘worse than useless.’”
Hana Kiros, The Atlantic
The right is optimistic about the plan and applauds the UN vote.
The right is optimistic about the plan and applauds the UN vote.
“Many had worried that the U.S. jaunt to the Security Council would come at the price of bending the peace plan’s terms for Hamas or adding anti-Israel terms… Not this time. Credit to Mr. Trump and U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz for flexing U.S. diplomatic muscle. That’s the only reason this text, which detracts nothing from the original 20 Trump points, could get through. Mr. Waltz calls it the most pro-Israel Security Council resolution in decades…
“This resolution doesn’t pretend there is currently a Palestinian state. It doesn’t demand a risky Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem and the expulsion of every Jew living there. It doesn’t prejudice negotiations by specifying final borders on ‘1967 lines.’ It doesn’t condition progress in Gaza on the creation of a Palestinian state… The time to talk about statehood is when such a state would cease to be a mortal threat to Israel.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
“With this U.N. vote, arguably the world’s most monomaniacally anti-Israel body has ratified the legitimacy of an indefinite Israeli military presence inside the Gaza Strip. It has sanctioned the Trump peace plan’s contention that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank must undergo some unspecified ‘reform program’ before it can assume sovereignty over Gaza. It has endorsed the notion that Gaza is not a Palestinian problem but a global problem…
“If nothing else, Trump’s peace deal compels the Arab world to become stakeholders in Gaza’s future. That’s surely preferable to the status quo ante, when Arab governments could insist that the conditions in the Palestinian territories are Israel’s problem only to criticize Israel’s management of them. These are wondrous developments.”
Noah Rothman, National Review
“Leading the charge to upend Trump’s vision will be the UN agency responsible for radicalizing Palestinian society, the UN Relief and Works Agency… Trump will need to shutter this organization by imposing anti-terrorism sanctions on it — a move fully justified by UNRWA’s complicity in empowering Hamas…
“Their curricula teach the idea of Palestinian ‘return’ — the belief that six million Arabs, few of whom were alive when five Arab armies declared war on a new Jewish State of Israel, will one day flood Israel’s borders and erase its Jewish majority… UNRWA facilities were used as Hamas bases of operation — in one documented case, sharing its power supply with an underground terror tunnel. The mountain of evidence showing how UNRWA provided material support for terrorism is why Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently called it a ‘subsidiary of Hamas’ that could play no role in Gaza’s future.”
Enia Krivine and Richard Goldberg, New York Post
