In the shattered heart of Khan Younis, where the southern Gaza Strip’s skyline stands as a jagged testament to two years of relentless bombardment, a fragile hush has settled. Until 18 November 2025, the air carried not the thunder of Israeli strikes but the tentative murmur of survival. Rubble-strewn streets, once alive with olive harvests and children’s laughter, now shelter families huddled in tents against the encroaching winter. Amid what Gaza’s authorities call the war’s ‘most dangerous’ shelter crisis, Moamen Abdul-Malek of Gaza City voices a sentiment resonating across the enclave: “Our people are able to rule ourselves… We are the people of this country, and we will bear responsibility for it.”
This raw assertion of sumud slices through the global fanfare surrounding the UN Security Council’s approval of a US-drafted resolution. Touted by President Donald Trump as a ‘historic breakthrough,’ the 17 Nov. vote – 13 in favour, abstentions from Russia and China – endorses a 20-point ‘Gaza peace plan’ promising reconstruction, a ceasefire, and a vague ‘credible pathway’ to statehood. Yet for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, with nearly 70,000 dead and 170,000 wounded since Oct. 2023, it is no victory. It is a gilded cage: foreign oversight that dilutes self-determination and entrenches occupation. As UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese warned, the plan imposes a ‘puppet administration,’ turning Gaza into an ‘open-air prison.’ Real peace demands dismantling apartheid and upholding international law, not repackaging injustice as relief.
From Carnage to Compromise: Unpacking the 20-Point Plan
The road to this resolution is paved with the debris of Gaza’s devastation. What began as a ‘retaliatory’ Israeli assault following Hamas’s 7 Oct. 2023 attack has morphed into a protracted siege, engineered to starve, displace, and subjugate. Daily raids in the occupied West Bank, where settlers torch olive groves sacred to Palestinian identity, compound the enclave’s agony. Mothers and children, as chronicled in harrowing reports, endure ‘engineered starvation,’ their pleas for bread unmet amid blockaded crossings. The 10 Oct. ceasefire, a hard-won respite forged in the fires of exhaustion, briefly quelled the bombardments, offering Gazans a glimpse of ‘fragile freedom.’ Yet, even as ink dried on that truce, Israeli strikes persisted east of Khan Younis, beyond the so-called ‘yellow line’ of military control, underscoring the ceasefire’s tenuousness.
Enter the 20-point plan, authorised after ‘high-stakes negotiations’ that revised its text multiple times – cosmetic tweaks, critics argue, to mask its asymmetries. At its core lies the International Stabilisation Force (ISF), a multinational contingent led by US and European allies, tasked with collaborating with Israel and Egypt to ‘secure border areas’ and ‘demilitarise the enclave.’ Flanked by ‘newly trained Palestinian police,’ the ISF’s mandate includes enforcing the ceasefire and overseeing humanitarian corridors. Then there is the ‘Board of Peace,’ a transitional governing body chaired, astonishingly, by Trump himself, with authority extending to the end of 2027. This unelected panel would helm Gaza’s reconstruction, from infrastructure to local elections, ostensibly paving the way for a Palestinian-led administration.
On paper, it nods to equity: unimpeded aid flows, economic incentives for rebuilding, and that elusive ‘pathway’ to statehood. Yet the language is labyrinthine, devoid of binding timelines for Israeli withdrawal or accountability for war crimes. References to a future Palestinian state are ‘convoluted,’ as one analyst noted in a recent Hindi-language breakdown of the vote, evoking the ghosts of failed accords like Oslo – promises that withered under the weight of settlement expansion. The plan’s silence on West Bank violence, settler impunity, and the root rot of occupation renders it a half-measure, prioritising Israeli ‘deradicalisation’ over Palestinian liberation.
For Gazans, whose homes lie in ruins and whose fields yield no harvest, this is no mere diplomatic footnote. It is a humanitarian imperative unmet: shelters buckling under winter rains, families without electricity as cold snaps descend. The resolution’s architects tout progress, but in the shadow of 70,000 graves, it rings hollow – a bandage on a gaping wound.
Voices from the Ground: Dissent as the True Turning Point
Palestinian Perspectives – Rejection as Resistance: If global reactions skew ‘mostly positive,’ as headlines proclaim, it is the Palestinians’ unyielding dissent that marks the genuine pivot. Hamas and allied factions, governing Gaza yet wholly excluded from the plan’s governance, issued a joint rebuke on 18 November: the resolution “imposes an international guardianship mechanism… which our people and their factions reject.” The ISF, they warn, forfeits neutrality by mandating the ‘disarming of the resistance,’ transforming it into ‘a party to the conflict in favour of the [Israeli] occupation.’ This, they assert, fails to address ‘political and humanitarian demands,’ ignoring the ‘daily attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers across the occupied West Bank’ and the ‘root causes like ending Israeli occupation and apartheid.’
From the streets, these words find flesh. Mohammed Hamdan, navigating Gaza City’s bomb-cratered avenues, decries the plan’s assault on legitimate defence: “It would strip the resistance of its weapons, despite the fact that resistance is a legitimate right of peoples under occupation.”
Sanaa Mahmoud Kaheel, her enthusiasm for a Palestinian Authority (PA) takeover soured by foreign interlopers, fears the uncertainty: “Things will be unclear with the international forces, and we do not know what might happen tomorrow or the day after.”
Their testimonies, raw and unfiltered, pierce the resolution’s optimism, revealing a populace not eager for saviours, but sovereigns. On 20 November, as The Sameer Project’s ‘Yalla, Na’merha’ (يلا،نعمرها‘Let Us Build It’) initiative cleared rubble in North Gaza and Khan Younis, renting tractors and hanging tarps to enable returns home, activists declared: “Palestinians are restoring their own peace and security in the complete vacuum left by the UNSC,” proving self-determination an ‘inalienable right lived and defended every day.’
The PA, stewarding fragments of the West Bank, offers a tempered embrace: the plan ‘affirms the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state,’ alongside aid unimpeded. Yet its Foreign Ministry insists on ‘full withdrawal of the occupying forces’ and safeguards against ‘displacement’ and ‘annexation’ – conditions the resolution’s vagueness leaves unheeded.
Professor Mohamad Elmasry of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies captures the unease: the lack of ‘guarantee for an independent Palestinian state leaves a good deal of cause for concern,’ with no ‘meaningful path forward’ etched in stone.
These voices, Palestinian at their core, expose the resolution’s myopia: a ‘turning point’ for some, a tightening noose for others.
International Echoes – A Chorus of Caution: Internationally, the chorus fractures along fault lines of power. France and the United Kingdom applaud the ‘ongoing peace efforts’ and urgent aid deployment, with UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper demanding open crossings to ‘flood Gaza with aid’ while upholding a two-state vision – Egypt and the UK, on 20 Nov., urging further steps to ‘cement the ceasefire’ and ‘ensure aid flow.’ Indonesia, offering up to 20,000 troops, prioritises ‘conflict resolution and sustainable peace’ through inclusive mandates. Yet Russia’s VassilyNebenzia abstains, branding the ISF a vessel for ‘unbridled experiments conducted by the US,’ reminiscent of ‘colonial practices’ that could sever Gaza from the West Bank. China echoes this, citing ‘ambiguity regarding Palestinian governance.’ Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu celebrates ‘full demilitarisation’ as a spur to Abraham Accords expansion, praising the vote anew on 20 Nov. as a path to ‘peace and prosperity’even as hardliner Itamar Ben-Gvir rages, threatening PA assassinations if statehood prospects advance.
Deeper Currents: Colonial Echoes and the Erosion of Palestinian Sovereignty
Undermining National Will: Beneath the diplomatic gloss lies a pernicious undercurrent: the erosion of Palestinian agency. The ISF, empowered to act ‘autonomously without regard for the position… of Ramallah,’ as Russia notes, risks becoming an occupation’s extended arm, securing borders while Israel retains de facto control. On 19 Nov., a leading legal scholar decried it as an ‘illegal trusteeship’ over Palestinians, codifying foreign domination in UN ink. Demilitarisation, framed as stability, pathologises resistance born of siege, contravening international law that affirms armed struggle against colonial rule. The Board’s Trump-led oversight, spanning finances to elections, evokes Mandate-era (1920-1948) impositions, where foreign ‘trusteeship’ stifled self-rule.
Humanitarian Façade: Humanitarian pledges, including reconstruction funds and aid corridorsdazzle, yet falter without teeth. Who oversees the $50 billion reconstruction kitty, implied in the plan’s economic pillars? US allies, likely, sidelining UNRWA and entrenching dependency. Gaza’s shelter implosion, its harvest a metaphor for stolen sustenance, demands not guarded largesse, but untrammelled return to the land. As one video analysis of the vote astutely observed, past pacts crumbled on similar vagueness; this risks the same, with funding shortfalls and Hamas holdouts looming as flashpoints.
In this schema, Palestinians are not partners, but problems to be managed –their will a variable to neutralise, not a foundation to build upon. The plan’s blindness to West Bank depredations, where Ben-Gvir’s incitements fester, fragments the national fabric, dooming unity.
The American Shadow: Empire in Peacemaker’s Garb
No dissection is complete without piercing the US veil. Trump’s Truth Social paean—’one of the biggest approvals in the History of the United Nations’—elides Palestinians entirely, a telling omission. As resolution sponsor, America casts itself as impartial midwife to peace, yet the Board’s chairmanship grants unprecedented leverage: veto over Gaza’s purse strings, security protocols, and political transitions until 2027. This is no neutral arbitration; it is imperial choreography, echoing Iraq’s post-invasion ‘stabilisation’ where US firms reaped billions amid chaos.
Hidden intents crystallise in the plan’s asymmetries. Demilitarisation neuters Hamas without reciprocal Israeli concessions, securing a ‘deradicalised’ buffer for Tel Aviv. Abraham Accords expansion, Netanyahu’s prize, counters Iran while funnelling Gulf petrodollars into US-aligned reconstruction – contracts for American tech in desalination plants, perhaps, or border surveillance. Russia’s ‘fig leaf’ jibe rings true: the haste to UN adoption, pre-empting escalation, installs a proxy regime before Palestinian cohesion regroups. Vague statehood dangles like a carrot, delaying withdrawal indefinitely, as analysts warn of Gaza’s isolation from Ramallah.
Geopolitically, it burnishes Trump’s legacy, outflanking rivals like China while binding Arab states to normalisation. Yet the human ledger, 70,000 lives, exposes the calculus: Palestinian futures as pawns in great-power chess. As Saurabh Shahi, an Indian analyst, insightfully queried in his video, will Indian mediation, via peacekeeping or tech diplomacy, inject equity? Or does US dominance foreclose such bridges?
Towards True Dawn: Humanity’s Reckoning
The UNSC resolution is no panacea; it’s a postponement, where ‘peace’ equates to Palestinian quiescence. Gaza’s people, from Abdul-Malek’s unbowed stance to the olive’s enduring root, proclaim otherwise: sovereignty is not bestowed, but seized through collective will.
For humanity’s sake, revisions are imperative – inclusive of PA and factions, with ironclad timelines for withdrawal and reparations. Global solidarity must surge: boycotts against complicit arms dealers, diplomatic pressure on enablers. India, with its balanced UN vote, could champion this, fostering mediation untainted by hegemony. Let peace mean justice: side by side, not one above the other. Only then will the mirage yield to morning light.