Yet this global diplomatic posture raises a critical question: how credible is Indonesia’s claim to peace leadership while a prolonged humanitarian crisis continues in West Papua?

In late February 2026, Prabowo offered Indonesia’s services to mediate rising tensions involving the United States, Israel and Iran, even stating he was prepared to travel to Tehran if both parties agreed to dialogue.

The message was reinforced when former Indonesian vice-president Jusuf Kalla met Iran’s ambassador, Mohammad Boroujerdi, on 3 March 2026 to reiterate Indonesia’s readiness to facilitate diplomatic engagement.

In response, Iran publicly welcomed the gesture but tempered expectations.

Iranian officials insisted that any meaningful mediation must include condemnation of US and Israeli military actions, warning that diplomatic initiatives without political clarity may have limited effectiveness.

The exchange highlighted both Indonesia’s aspiration to play a larger diplomatic role and the complexities of international conflict mediation.

Peacebroker limitations
However, Indonesia’s attempt to position itself as a global peace broker has already faced significant limitations. In 2023, Prabowo proposed a peace plan for the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The proposal, which included controversial suggestions such as a demilitarised zone and a referendum in disputed territories, was quickly rejected by Ukrainian officials. The response exposed the limited influence of Indonesia’s mediation efforts in conflicts far beyond Southeast Asia.

While presenting himself internationally as a peacemaker, critics argue that Prabowo has largely paid lip service to human rights at home, particularly regarding the unresolved crisis in West Papua.

Indonesian protesters denounce US link over Iran war         Video: Al Jazeera

While Indonesia promotes its diplomatic role in international conflicts, violence and instability continue to affect civilians in West Papua.

On 11 February 2026, only weeks before Prabowo’s international mediation initiative gained attention, a small civilian aircraft operated by Smart Air came under gunfire shortly after landing at Korowai Batu airstrip in Boven Digoel, West Papua.

A spokesperson linked to the military wing of Free Papua Movement (TPNPB- OPM) later claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that the aircraft had allegedly been used to transport Indonesian security forces.

The roots of the crisis stretch back to the early 1960s, when Indonesia invaded and took control of the territory following the withdrawal of Dutch colonial administration.

Act of Free Choice controversy
The subsequent 1969 referendum, known as the Act of Free Choice, remains one of the most controversial political processes in modern Southeast Asian and South Pacific history.

Rather than a universal vote, approximately 1025 selected representatives voted under significant political and military pressure.

Many Papuans and international observers argue that the process failed to meet internationally recognized standards for self-determination. As a result, the legitimacy of the referendum continues to be contested, and its legacy remains a central grievance fueling decades of political resistance and armed conflict.

For many analysts and human rights advocates, the Papua conflict cannot simply be framed as a domestic security problem. Instead, it represents a protracted humanitarian and political crisis that has yet to find a comprehensive and inclusive resolution.

In this sense, the issue has become what some observers describe as a long-standing wound within the Indonesian state.

Such incidents highlight the tragic reality faced by ordinary Papuans, who often find themselves caught between military operations and Papuan resistance attacks.

Civilians bear the brunt of a conflict that has persisted for decades without meaningful political dialogue capable of addressing its underlying causes.

Rising internal displacement in West Papua
According to reports by human rights organisations and humanitarian groups, displacement in West Papua has increased significantly in recent years.

The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) has risen dramatically, from roughly 55,000 at the end of 2023 to more than 103,000 by October 2025. Many displaced communities face severe shortages of food, healthcare, education, and basic security.

These figures reflect a broader systemic failure to protect civilians and provide sustainable solutions for affected communities. Despite decades of development initiatives and official rhetoric emphasising stability and prosperity in Papua, the lived reality for many residents remains defined by insecurity and displacement.

Prabowo’s own military history also continues to shape international perceptions of Indonesia’s human rights record. During the Indonesian occupation of East Timor between 1975 and 1999, Prabowo served as an officer in Indonesia’s elite special forces, Kopassus.

Human rights organisations have linked him to operations accused of abuses against civilians during that period.

Following the 1999 referendum that ultimately led to East Timor’s independence, the United Nations supported investigations into violence carried out by Indonesian-backed militias and security forces.

Although Prabowo was never tried or convicted by an international court, activists and some Timorese leaders have long argued that senior Indonesian officers should have faced deeper scrutiny.

Shaping of credibility
In international diplomacy, credibility is often shaped not only by external initiatives but also by a state’s domestic human rights record. When internal conflicts remain unresolved, claims to global moral leadership can face heightened scrutiny.

Prabowo was also involved in military operations in Papua during the 1990s. One of the most widely discussed incidents was the 1996 Mapenduma hostage crisis in the highlands of what is now Nduga Regency.

Human rights organisations have documented allegations of abuses committed by Indonesian security forces during that period.

Additional controversies have surrounded claims that aircraft bearing the emblem of the International Committee of the Red Cross were misused during operations. Such allegations, whether proven or not, continue to raise questions about adherence to international humanitarian law and contribute to lingering distrust among Papuan communities.

Taken together, these historical and contemporary dynamics create a sharp contrast between Indonesia’s global diplomatic ambitions and the unresolved realities within its own borders.

In international diplomacy, credibility is closely tied to domestic consistency.
It is difficult to advocate peace abroad while unresolved grievances and allegations of human rights violations persist at home.

For Indonesia, genuine leadership in global peacemaking would require more than diplomatic offers on the world stage. It would involve confronting the deeper structural issues underlying the conflict in West Papua.

Ensuring accountability
This would include ensuring accountability for past abuses, protecting civil liberties, and opening inclusive political dialogue that allows Papuans to meaningfully participate in shaping their own future.

Without such reforms, Indonesia’s peace diplomacy risks being perceived less as principled international engagement and more as a form of strategic public relations. The gap between Jakarta’s diplomatic rhetoric and the lived experiences of Papuan civilians remains stark.

Ultimately, Indonesia’s credibility as a global peacemaker will depend not only on its willingness to mediate conflicts abroad but also on its ability to address the long-standing humanitarian and political crisis within West Papua.

Until that gap is bridged, Indonesia’s aspirations for global diplomatic leadership will continue to face serious questions about legitimacy and moral authority.

The continued instability in West Papua also has broader regional implications for the Pacific, where several governments and civil society groups have increasingly raised concerns about the humanitarian situation faced by indigenous West Papuans.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe in the highlands bordering the Star Mountains region of Papua New Guinea. He holds a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Democracy Now!

In Gaza, a senior Hamas leader involved in the ceasefire negotiations has told Drop Site News that Hamas will not agree to demands that it unilaterally disarm.

Basem Naim also said that Hamas would not submit to Israel’s demand for a total demilitarisation of the Gaza Strip.

This comes amid reports that President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed back in December that Hamas would be given a two-month deadline to disarm.

As President Donald Trump prepares to convene the first official meeting of his so-called Board of Peace in Washington tomorrow, he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have re-escalated demands that Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions imminently disarm — with Netanyahu insisting that all small arms must be turned over before the Israeli military withdraws any of its forces.

“Very importantly, Hamas must uphold its commitment to Full and Immediate Demilitarisation,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Sunday.

This demand is being presented as a condition for any reconstruction to begin in Gaza, with no guarantees for Palestinian security or sovereignty.

Criminal complaint
On Monday, the Hind Rajab Foundation said it had filed a criminal complaint in Chile seeking the prosecution of Rom Kovtun, an Israeli soldier accused of taking part in the deadly 2024 siege of Al-Shifa Hospital.

The World Health Organisation reports at least 21 patients were killed during attacks on the hospital.

Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is demanding greater access to Gaza to expand aid and recovery efforts.

Administrator Alexander De Croo spoke from Gaza City:

Alexander De Croo: “More than 300,000 families in Gaza are looking for housing. Only 10 percent of people today living in Gaza have housing which has the basic accommodations, so 90 percent of the population is today looking for housing.

“You have seen in what very difficult circumstances people have to live or have to survive.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Protesters have condemned Indonesia’s plan to take part in the International Stabilisaton Force for Gaza as Israel continues to violate the ceasefire on an almost daily basis.

Carrying placards declaring “Break the siege”, “Gaza is not for sale”, “So, when will the Palestinians get to decide their own future” and crosses over the Israeli flag, protesters marched through streets in Jakarta dressed in keffiyeh and Palestinian flags.

Reports from Jakarta say that the country is preparing to send about 8000 troops to Gaza as part of the so-called peacekeeping force.

President Prabowo Subianto is due to join a meeting of what US President Donald Trump calls the “Board of Peace” in Washington on Thursday, reports Al Jazeera.

Indonesia’s involvement is controversial with Prabowo facing mounting criticism for the deployment plans.

Many critics are saying the plan could “sideline” the Palestinians and are accusing Subianto of “serving Israel’s goals”.

He has sought to reassure Muslim leaders that Indonesia would withdraw if Palestinian interests in self-determination are not advanced.

Indonesia peecekeeping force plan                       Video: Al Jazeera

Fiji is also facing controversy over reported plans that it may also be deploying troops for the ISF.

However, Fiji’s Defence Minister Pio Tikoduadua has clarified that Fiji has not yet made any commitment to participate, saying six days ago that the country has only received an invitation, reports Pacnews.

In a statement posted on social media, Tikoduadua stressed that no response had been given at this stage.

“Let me be clear: Fiji has only received an invitation to be part of the Gaza international stabilisation force. We have not yet responded,” he said.

Writing for Asia Pacific Report, former Fiji military officer Jim Sanday who commanded Fijian peacekeeping battalions in Lebanon and Sinai, was highly critical of the proposal, saying its United Nations reputation risked being damaged while being “excluded from decision-making”.

In 2025, Sanday led the National Security and Defence Review (NSDR) and co-authored the National Security Strategy that was approved by Cabinet in June 2025.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When peace is being designed, Fiji is not invited into the room.

When peace needs enforcing, Fiji is asked to send soldiers.

That uncomfortable reality is exposed by the emergence of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” for Gaza.

While New Zealand was formally invited to join the Board — and chose to decline — Fiji was not invited at all.

Yet Fiji has reportedly been asked to contribute troops to a proposed “stabilisation force” linked to Gaza.

The contrast is revealing. It highlights how global security is increasingly organised — and where Fiji is positioned within that order.

The Board of Peace is reportedly structured as an exclusive body with a joining fee of around US$2 billion.

That cost alone places participation far beyond the reach of most developing countries.

For Fiji, whose entire national budget is only a fraction of that amount, membership is not simply impractical; it is structurally impossible.

In this model, peace is something designed by those who can afford entry — a “pay to play” arrangement.

Yet although Fiji cannot afford to “play”, its military presence is required.

The peacekeeping paradox: Respected soldiers, limited voice

For decades, Fijian soldiers have served with distinction in peacekeeping missions under the United Nations flag. Their professionalism, discipline and reliability are widely recognised.

But that reputation now risks confining Fiji to a familiar role: valued for its manpower but excluded from decision-making.

This is not partnership. It is subcontracting.

Fiji should not carry the risks of other people’s decisions without having a voice in them.

New Zealand had a choice. Fiji did not.
New Zealand’s refusal to join Trump’s Board of Peace, underscores the imbalance.

Wellington cited concerns about mandate clarity and alignment with international norms.

New Zealand had the opportunity to make that choice.

Fiji did not.

One country was offered a seat at the table; the other was offered boots on the ground.

For Fiji, this raises serious foreign policy questions.

The issue is not opposition to peacekeeping. The issue is peacekeeping without political voice — being asked to assume risk in missions shaped by others and detached from established multilateral oversight.

Alignment with existing policy
These concerns align closely with Fiji’s National Security and Defence Review (NSDR), which recognises that national security includes the adherence to international law, and the maintenance of trust in Fiji’s external engagements.

Central to the NSDR is the requirement that security commitments be legitimate, transparent and accountable, supported by clear civilian oversight.

Being asked to deploy troops into a stabilisation force designed outside the UN system, while being excluded from the political body determining its mandate, sits way outside those espoused principles.

The moral burden on soldiers and the families
Fiji will bear the operational and political risk but has little influence over strategic direction. Fiji will carry the risks without shaping the outcome.

This puts RFMF soldiers in an unclear and fraught position. They — and their families — are the ones who will carry the risk in this venture. It is a morally and ethically unfair burden for the government to place upon them.

This moment therefore calls for clarity and restraint by the decision makers in Fiji’s Parliament and Cabinet.

The question is not whether Fiji can contribute troops — history shows that it can and has done so with honour.

The question is whether such contributions serve Fiji’s national interest and upholds international legitimacy.

Honouring our legacy
Fiji’s peacekeeping legacy should not be used to justify accepting deployments where authority, accountability and purpose are unclear.

Peacekeeping without representation is not partnership.

Fiji has earned international respect as a contributor to global peace. It should not accept a future in which it is always invited to serve but never invited to decide.

No soldier should be sent into harm’s way without clear purpose, lawful authority, and their nation’s voice at the table.

Jim Sanday was a commissioned military officer in the pre-coup Royal Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) and commanded Fijian peacekeeping battalions in Lebanon and Sinai. In 2025, he led the National Security and Defence Review (NSDR) and co-authored the National Security Strategy that was approved by Cabinet in June 2025. This article was first pubished by the Fiji Sun and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An invitation from a distant warzone landed in Suva earlier this month. The United States, with Israel’s endorsement, has asked Fiji to send troops to join a proposed International Stabilisation Force in Gaza.

For a nation proud of its United Nations peacekeeping legacy, this whispers of global recognition. Yet, it is a dangerous siren’s call, urging Fiji toward a perilous mission that risks betraying a far more urgent duty at home.

This force would swap impartial peacekeeping for coercive enforcement, serving great-power ambition over principle.

Simultaneously, Australia faces its own costly summons, involving a bill of up to US$1 billion, to take up a permanent seat on a controversial “Board of Peace” overseeing Gaza.

With no Palestinian voice and critics decrying it as a “transactional colonial solution”, this board aims not for peace but to sideline the UN, cementing a donor-driven world order.

For Oceania, these parallel invitations present a defining choice: expend finite resources on a flawed project thousands of kilometres away, or assert true regional independence by confronting the clear and present danger eroding our own communities — the transnational crime and drug epidemic.

The Gaza plan is architecturally unsound. The force Fiji is asked to join is not a traditional UN mission deployed with consent; it is a peace enforcement body expected to demilitarise a shattered, hostile territory — a task requiring overwhelming force and unambiguous political will, neither of which is guaranteed.

Designed for dysfunction
The Board of Peace itself is designed for dysfunction, acting as a parallel structure to the UN Security Council where influence is bought, not earned.

For Australia, the billion-dollar question is stark: is this investment in distant geopolitical theatre wiser than addressing the existential crisis in its primary sphere of influence?

This moment mirrors a recent lesson from Europe. When President Trump targeted Greenland, European nations stood collectively on the principle of territorial integrity, forcing a retreat.

Their unity demonstrated that defending sovereignty collectively is the only way smaller states are protected from the predatory actions of larger ones.

For the Pacific, the lesson is clear: our security lies in collective regional resolve, not in subsidising external power plays that undermine the very multilateral rules that protect us.

This dynamic exposes the core hypocrisy of the new transactional order. It invites regions like ours to help manage conflicts born of imperial histories and great-power rivalries, while the same powers show a willingness to disregard the sovereignty of smaller states when it suits their strategic whims.

The Greenland episode is not an isolated fantasy; it is a blueprint. If economic coercion can be levelled against a NATO ally for territory, what guarantees exist for nations in the Pacific, whose strategic waterways and exclusive economic zones are equally coveted?

Enshrines coercion
The Board of Peace model enshrines this very coercion, asking nations to pay for a voice in a system that inherently devalues the sovereign equality that the UN Charter promises.

While Gaza beckons with false prestige, a real war is destroying our social fabric. Fiji’s National Security Strategy identifies the methamphetamine epidemic as a top-tier threat (p. 19). Record drug busts reveal not success, but the staggering scale of invasion.

This crisis fuels violence, overwhelms health systems, corrupts leaders and drains state resources.

To even contemplate diverting military and political focus to Gaza is to declare this domestic war secondary. It begs a foundational question: what is the ultimate purpose of sovereignty if not to deliver safety and security to one’s own people first?

This is the primary duty of any state. When institutions are eroded by cartels while security forces look abroad, that duty has failed.

This crisis is the true test of our regional architecture. The traffickers’ networks are transnational, exploiting fragmented governance and weak maritime surveillance. Their success is a direct result of our collective vulnerability.

To confront them requires a consolidation of sovereignty, not its diversion. Every police officer, intelligence analyst and naval patrol boat committed to a quagmire overseas is a resource stripped from guarding our own shores.

Diplomatic minefield
The political capital spent navigating the diplomatic minefield of Gaza is capital not spent rallying the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) to adopt a wartime footing against a clear, shared enemy. We cannot allow the spectre of one crisis to blind us to the substance of another.

The strategic response lies not in the Middle East, but in our own waters. Australia must make up its mind. That US$1 billion — a sum that could transform regional security — could and should be the cornerstone of a bold, coordinated campaign against the drug crisis, championed through the Forum.

I am not arguing for a return to failed, militarised prohibition. I propose a holistic, regional compact built on:

• Integrated policing: A permanent regional Task Force with real-time intelligence fusion to disrupt trafficking syndicates and their finances;
• Community resilience: Co-designed programs creating economic alternatives for youth and supporting rehabilitation to erode the cartels’ demand; and
• Institutional integrity: Major initiatives to shield judiciaries and border services from corruption, ensuring the rule of law is an asset.

In a world of transactional great-power politics, Australia must consciously encircle the Pasifika. This means investing politically and financially in the PIF, respecting its priorities and heeding its calls.

Addressing this crisis would be an act of enlightened self-preservation for Australia, and a lifeline for the region. The model exists in our history: the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, known as RAMSI, succeeded because it blended Australian resources with Pasifika personnel and local knowledge. We must summon that spirit again for a more complex fight.

The invitations to Gaza are a test of strategic identity. For Fiji, it is a test of resisting the seductive glare of distant drama for the sober duty of safeguarding the homeland.

Choice for Australia
For Australia, it is a choice: to fund a board that undermines global order or to invest in a sovereign regional compact against a shared existential threat.

True leadership is demonstrated not by saying a reflexive “yes” to powerful patrons, but by having the wisdom to say “no” when their wishes conflict with fundamental principles of multilateralism and life-and-death needs at home.

Europe showed that collective defence of sovereignty is how smaller states secure their future. For the Pasifika, our path to security and independence does not run through the rubble of Gaza. It runs through the strengthened, cooperative spirit of our own Blue Continent.

Choosing this closer, harder path is the mark of a region that truly knows where it belongs. It is the only choice that builds a legacy of genuine security, leaving our children a future defined not by the crises we attended elsewhere, but by the community we fortified here.

Ro Naulu Mataitini is a Fijian high chief of Rewa Province. A founding member of the People’s Alliance Party, he now serves as an apolitical member of Fiji’s Great Council of Chiefs and is the chairman of Rewa Provincial Holdings Company Limited. He is a retired security executive with the United Nations. This article appeared first on the Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre at the Australian National University and is republished under Creative Commons.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Feckless European leaders like Starmer let Israel and the US tear up international law in Gaza. Now, faced with Greenland and Ukraine, they are suffering from a severe case of buyer’s regret.

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

US President Donald Trump has declared the three-month “ceasefire” in Gaza a great success, and now wants to move on to phase two of his so-called “peace plan”.

What does success look like? Israeli soldiers have killed more than 460 Palestinians since October, including at least 100 children.

Israel has levelled another 2500 buildings, the last of the few that were still standing.

And amid a continuing humanitarian catastrophe engineered by Israel through its blockade of food, water, medicines and shelter, at least eight babies are known to have frozen to death as winter temperatures plummet.

Marking the transition to the new phase, Trump announced earlier this month a “Board of Peace” to determine the enclave’s future.

“Peace” here is being used in exactly the same Orwellian sense as “ceasefire”. This is not about ending Gaza’s suffering. It is about creating Big Brother-style narrative control, selling as “peace” the final eradication of Palestinian life in Gaza.

The narrative spin is that, once Hamas is disarmed, the board will take on the job of Gaza’s reconstruction.

Implicit assumption
The implicit assumption is that life will gradually return to normal for the survivors of the two-year genocide Israel has carried out — though no Western leader is acknowledging it as a genocide, or cares to find out how many Palestinians have actually been killed in the onslaught.

But, as we shall see, peace is definitely not what the board is aiming to achieve. This is a cynical exercise in smoke and mirrors.

The term “board” hints not only at Trump’s preference for the language of business over politics. It alludes too to the business opportunities he intends to make from Gaza’s “transformation”.

His plan is to strip the United Nations — and thereby the international community — of any oversight of Gaza’s fate.

We are back to the time of viceroys. Colonialism is again out and proud.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” has much grander ambitions than simply managing Gaza’s takeover. In fact, the enclave and its future is not even mentioned in the board’s so-called “charter” sent out to national capitals.

In a leaked invitation to the president of Argentina, Trump referred to the board as a “bold new approach to resolving global conflicts”.

‘Results-orientated’
The charter says it will be “results-orientated” and have the “the courage to depart from approaches and institutions that have too often failed”.

Some of us have long warned that Israel and the US view the Palestinians as lab rats, both for testing weapons and surveillance technologies and for changing the norms developed after the Second World War to safeguard against the return of fascist, militaristic and expansionist ideologies.

The critical legal and humanitarian architecture put in place in the post-war era included the UN and its various institutions, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel and the US stress-tested this system to destruction from the very start of the two-year genocide in Gaza, as Israel carpet-bombed the enclave’s homes, schools, hospitals, government buildings and bakeries.

Trump’s second presidency has pushed this agenda into overdrive.

Only this month the White House announced that the US was pulling out of 66 global organisations and treaties — some half of them affiliated with the UN.

Meanwhile, the judges and prosecutors of the ICC have been under draconian US sanctions for issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant. The ICJ, which is investigating Israel for genocide, appears to have been cowed into silence.

Dysfunctional world order
Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his imminent seizure of Greenland are evidence enough that the already dysfunctional, international “rules-based order” is now in tatters. Both the UN and Nato, the West’s so-called “defence” alliance, are on the ropes.

The US president hopes his “Board of Peace” will deliver the knockout blow, supplanting the UN and the system of international law it is there to uphold.

The reconstruction of Gaza may be its first task, but Trump has much larger aspirations.

The board stands at the heart of a new world order being shaped in Trump’s image. Billionaires and their hangers-on will openly decide the fate of weak nations, based on the power elite’s naked, predatory instincts to make money.

In a petulant letter sent to Norway’s prime minister, Trump advised that, after being passed over for the Nobel peace prize: “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace.” What in that case, one might wonder, is the point of a “Board of Peace”?

The answer is that Orwell’s moment is truly upon us: “War is peace.”

Trump, of course, has sat himself atop this new imperial business venture, an updated East India Company — the gargantuan, militarised corporation licensed by England’s Queen Elizabeth I that went on to pillage much of the globe for more than two centuries, spreading death and misery in its wake.

Trump’s lone veto
As chairman, Trump hand-picks the other members — he is reported to have sent out invitations to some 60 national leaders. He can terminate their participation whenever he sees fit. He decides when the board sits and what it discusses. He alone has a veto.

His term as chair, it seems, may extend even beyond his time as US president.

Members are granted a three-year term. A permanent seat at Trump’s new alternative to the UN Security Council can be bought for $1 billion in “cash funds”.

Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orban was among the first out of the blocks. He was joined by Netanyahu. Other early participants include the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Belarus and Argentina.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is reported to be considering a place at the top table.

The significance of this is not lost on the diplomatic community. One told Reuters: “It’s a ‘Trump United Nations’ that ignores the fundamentals of the UN charter.”

Similarly, in a desperate attempt to hold the line, the French Foreign Ministry issued a forlorn statement that “reiterates [France’s] attachment to the United Nations charter”.

White House shredder
But the founding UN document, with its formal commitments to non-aggression, self-determination, multilateral obligations and the protection of human rights, has been put through the White House shredder.

Gangsters have no time for rules.

For decades, Israel has been dreaming of this moment: of taking a wrecking ball to the UN and its legal and humanitarian institutions.

With a record number of UN resolutions against it, Israel believes the world body has too often limited its room for manoeuvre. Now it will hope Trump frees it to finish its long-cherished plan of eradicating the Palestinian people from their homeland.

As if in celebration, Israeli bulldozers swept into occupied East Jerusalem to demolish the buildings of Unrwa, the UN refugee agency that has served as the main aid lifeline for Gaza’s people.

Unrwa called Israel’s action an “unprecedented attack” and one that “constitutes a serious violation of international law and the privileges and immunities of the United Nations”.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the “Board of Peace” to raise any objections.

Sidelining of UN
Trump’s sidelining of the UN means its assessments of the realities facing Gaza, after Israel’s two-year campaign of genocidal destruction, can be quietly shunted into the shadows.

Trump has set a five-year timeline for Gaza’s transition. But the figures simply don’t add up.

The world body has warned that, even if Israel stops its blockade tomorrow, it will take decades to reconstruct Gaza, effectively from scratch, to house those of its 2.1 million inhabitants who survive.

According to estimates from the UN Development Programme, on the best-case scenario it could take seven years to clear some 60 million tonnes of rubble. Other surveys by the UN suggest a more realistic timetable of 20 years, with 10 years to clear unexploded ordnance.

The UN’s trade and development arm further warns that Israel has erased 70 years of human development in Gaza, and destroyed nearly 90 percent of cropland, leading to “the worst economic collapse ever recorded”.

Gaza’s schools, universities, hospitals, libraries and government offices are all gone. And Israel’s so-called “Yellow Line” that divides Gaza into two has annexed in all but name almost 60 percent of what was already a tiny territory, one of the most densely populated on the planet.

The fact is that these enormous hurdles to restoring life in Gaza to anything approximating “modernity” barely register in Trump’s peace plan. There is a good reason for that: strip away the fanfare and the plan has nothing substantive to say about the welfare of Gaza’s population.

Gaza’s population ignored
Or to put it more bluntly, Trump’s Gaza’s plan is not interested in Gaza’s population because it does not envision them being present in the enclave for much longer.

Israel’s barely veiled goal over the past two years has been the wholesale ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The carpet bombing was intended to make the territory entirely uninhabitable.

Trump’s plan does not conflict with that ambition. It complements it. His “Board of Peace” is the means to arrive at the final destination willed by Israel.

The first practical function of the “Board of Peace” will be to entrench the complicity of Western and Arab states in Israel’s eradication of Gaza. None can wriggle out of their responsibility for what follows.

Real decision-making powers, however, will reside not in the Board but in an executive body comprising seven figures close to Trump. The “Board of Peace” will presumably be expected to sign off on — and fund — whatever they decide.

This “Founding Executive Board”, like the “Board of Peace”, will have no Palestinian representatives.

Instead, Palestinians will be present only on a technocratic, dogsbody committee, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. It will oversee the administration of day-to-day affairs in the so-called Red Zone, where Gaza’s people are penned up, in place of Hamas.

Revamped UN peacekeeping force
Finally an “International Stabilisation Force”, a revamped UN peacekeeping force, will be led by a US major-general, and presumably partner closely with Israel’s genocidal army.

Even assuming that Trump has the Palestinians’ welfare at heart — he doesn’t — no progress can be made by any of these bodies until Israel gives its approval.

In the meantime, their role will be to provide a veneer of legitimacy for further inaction, while more of Gaza’s survivors die from the Stone Age conditions engineered for them by Israel.

Note well the three real power brokers appointed to the “Founding Executive Board”: Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff and Tony Blair. Gaza’s fate is effectively in their hands.

It was Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and scion of a real estate business family, who way back in February 2024 — long before Trump took office — framed Israel’s genocide in Gaza as “a real-estate dispute”.

It was then that Kushner first publicly floated the idea of developing the enclave into a “very valuable” waterfront property, once it had been “cleaned up”.

Steve Witkoff, a New York real estate mogul and Trump’s special envoy, has spent long months with Kushner — as Israel has been busy clearing out Old Gaza — working on a 40-page prospectus for their proposed New Gaza.

Kushner’s panic
In October, on the US TV news show 60 Minutes, panic was etched on Kushner’s face as Witkoff observed that the pair had been working on a “masterplan” for Gaza’s reconstruction for two years — long before Gaza was levelled by the Israeli military.

He added: “Jared has been pushing this.”

Witkoff’s slip suggested Trump’s team had known from the outset of Israel’s bombing campaign that the intention was to eradicate the whole of Gaza rather than just Hamas. They therefore began working on a business plan to cash in on the carnage.

Through a so-called GREAT Trust — an oh-so-clever acronym for Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation — they have reimagined the enclave as a glitzy seaside resort and a tech hub generating billions of dollars in annual revenue.

A surreal video Trump posted on social media nearly a year ago gave an early idea of what the pair may have in mind. It showed the US president and Netanyahu sipping cocktails on sun loungers in their swimwear amid high rises on Gaza’s ethnically cleansed beachfront.

Gaza’s population — impoverished and malnourished by decades of isolation and blockade, even before the genocide — is viewed as an obstacle to the plan’s realisation.

The enclave’s Palestinians must first be resettled elsewhere, on terms that are as yet unclear, seemingly even to the plan’s formulators.

Misleading Tony Blair
Also popping up on the Executive Board, like a bad penny, is Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who misled Parliament and the public to make the case for joining President George W Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

A subsequent, long, violent US-led occupation resulted in the collapse of Iraqi society, a vicious sectarian civil war, the development of an extensive US torture programme, and the deaths of more than a million Iraqis.

Those seem like exactly the kind of qualifications Trump needs from someone overseeing his Gaza plan.

His administration is therefore selling Blair as a safe pair of hands, a statesman apparently well-acquainted with navigating the yawning gap between the imperious demands of Israel and the forlorn hopes of the Palestinian leadership.

Blair’s skill set, we are assured, will be critically important as the board turns its attention to rebuilding Gaza.

In fact, the last person Gaza needs is Blair, as he proved during his disastrous eight-year stint as special envoy to the Middle East, shoe-horned in by the US in 2007 on behalf of a little-missed, defunct international body known as the Quartet.

At the time, most observers mistakenly assumed Blair’s mandate would be to revive a moribund “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians.

Diplomatic pressure avoided
But Blair avoided bringing any diplomatic pressure to bear on Israel and remained silent about what was then a newly instituted blockade of Gaza in 2007 that rapidly eviscerated its economy and left much of its population destitute and poorly fed.

One of his key battles as envoy was lobbying Israel — over the Palestinians’ heads — to let a British-led consortium drill for natural gas in Gaza’s territorial waters, where large reserves are known to exist.

According to reports, he sought to entice Israel into approving a $6 billion deal by promising that the pipeline would head directly to Israel’s port of Ashkelon. Israel would be the only customer permitted to buy the Palestinians’ gas and could therefore dictate the price.

Israel, preferring to maintain its chokehold on Gaza’s people, refused.

Blair claimed he promoted the Gaza gas project at the behest of the Palestinians. But even the supine Palestinian leadership of the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank, had no love for him.

In 2011, Nabil Shaath, then one of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ most trusted advisers, observed of Blair: “Lately, he talks like an Israeli diplomat, selling their policies. Therefore he is useless to us.”

Another official called him “an obstacle to the realisation of Palestinian statehood”.

No interest in Palestinians
Like Blair, Trump has no interest in the Palestinians ever benefiting from their own resources. But doubtless he will be keen to leverage the former UK prime minister’s “experience” as envoy to assist in plundering its gas fields.

The centrality of Israel to Blair’s moral worldview was underscored in a comment by him in 2011 about the Arab Spring, in which peoples across the Middle East tried to liberate themselves from the toxic grip of tyrants. The former British prime minister chiefly saw these democratic uprisings as likely to “pose a problem for Israel”.

Blair has denied any personal dealings with Kushner and Witkoff’s Gaza Riviera plan — now sometimes referred to as the Sunshine Project — of luxury beachfront resorts and a “smart manufacturing zone” named for billionaire Elon Musk.

But a version leaked last July suggests his fingerprints are all over the plan, including a proposed “voluntary relocation” scheme to buy out Palestinian landowners with minor sums to leave Gaza.

It emerged that two key members of his think tank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, had been liaising behind the scenes with Israeli businessmen and the Boston Consulting Group on the project.

A statement from the institute welcomed Blair’s role on Trump’s Executive Board, noting: “For Gaza and its people, we want a Gaza which does not reconstruct Gaza as it was but as it could and should be.”

It is hard to believe that Blair’s “should” connotes anything other than Israel’s dream of a Palestinian-free Gaza and Trump’s vision of Gaza as a playground for the rich.

Trumpian world template
The template for a new Trumpian world order is being crafted in Gaza. The US president’s road to the takeover of Venezuela and Greenland is being paved in this tiny Palestinian territory.

Feckless European leaders, like Britain’s Keir Starmer, who helped arm Israel and provided it with diplomatic cover as it levelled the enclave, were the ones who emboldened Trump.

Those now trying to assert the primacy of international law and the “rules-based world order” — whether in Greenland or Ukraine — were the ones who helped Washington destroy that order. They are now suffering from a severe case of buyer’s regret.

They could still stymie Trump’s latest, sinister vanity project by refusing to join the “Board of Peace” and instead defend the United Nations and its legal institutions like the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Will they do so? Don’t bet on it.

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by Middle East Eye.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

The recent announcement by Fiji’s Minister of Defence and Veterans Affairs that Fiji will consider contributing troops to a proposed international stabilisation force in Gaza imposes a responsibility on all of us to ask the hard questions before the decision is finalised by Cabinet.

At the outset, let’s all be clear on one thing — Gaza is not a routine peacekeeping environment. It is a highly contested battlespace where the legitimacy, consent, and enforceability of any international force remain uncertain.

Before Fiji government commits its soldiers to Gaza, the public deserves clear answers to a number of questions about the risks such a deployment would pose to those on the ground.

1: Is there genuine consent?
The most fundamental issue is the explicit rejection of the stabilisation force concept by Hamas, the dominant armed actor in Gaza.

Peacekeeping doctrine rests on consent, impartiality, and limited use of force. When one principal party openly rejects a mission, the cornerstone of consent collapses.

Without consent, Fijian soldiers in Gaza will not be seen as neutral interposers. They risk being perceived as a hostile occupying force, regardless of intent.

For troops on the ground, this dramatically elevates the risk.

Patrols, checkpoints, convoys, and static positions become potential targets — not because Fijian and other soldiers in the stabilisation force have failed, but because their presence itself is rejected.

Fiji’s peacekeepers have historically operated where communities accepted their role.

Gaza would represent a fundamentally different operational reality.

2: How clear and limited is the mandate?
Public reporting suggests the proposed force would support public order, protect humanitarian operations, assist in rebuilding Palestinian policing, and potentially contribute to the demilitarisation of armed groups.

Each of these tasks carries different — and escalating — levels of risk.

Protecting aid corridors is one thing. Being perceived as assisting disarmament or security restructuring against the wishes of the dominant armed faction in Gaza, is quite another.

Without a narrow, realistic mandate and clear rules of engagement, Fijian soldiers in Gaza risk mission creep — sliding from stabilisation into enforcement.

History shows that unclear mandates expose peacekeepers to rising hostility while leaving them politically constrained in how they respond.

The Fiji public deserves to know exactly what its soldiers would be authorised — and expected — to do if confronted by armed resistance.

3: Are troops being deployed into an urban conflict?
Gaza is one of the most complex operating environments in the world: dense urban terrain, extensive tunnel networks, armed groups embedded within civilian populations, and a society traumatised by prolonged conflict.

If Hamas and other factions do not accept the force, Fijian soldiers will find themselves operating in conditions closer to low-intensity urban warfare.

In such environments, visibility offers no protection. Uniforms do not deter improvised explosive devices, snipers, or politically motivated attacks.

The Fiji public are entitled to know whether its sons and daughters are being sent to stabilise a peace — or to operate amid an unresolved conflict where peace does not yet exist.

4: What does Fiji’s own experience tell us?
Fiji’s long service with UNIFIL in Lebanon offers an important point of comparison.

Fijian troops operated there with a clear UN mandate, within defined areas of responsibility, and — crucially — with working relationships with local communities that largely accepted their presence. Even then, the environment was never risk-free.

Gaza would be more volatile.

Unlike southern Lebanon, Gaza involves an armed group that openly rejects the very concept of an international force.

That distinction matters profoundly for force protection and operational viability.

5: What is the duty of care?
Ultimately, the central issue is the Fiji government’s duty of care to its soldiers and their families.

Courage is not the same as recklessness.

Pride in service must be matched by a rigorous assessment of the risks; whether the mission is lawful, achievable, adequately resourced and grounded in a good dose of political reality.

Before any deployment, the government owes the public clear answers:

• Is there genuine consent from all major parties on the ground?
• Is the mandate limited, realistic, and enforceable?
• Are the rules of engagement robust enough if consent collapses?
• And is Fiji being asked to stabilise a peace — or to substitute for one that does not yet exist?

Asking these questions is not an act of disloyalty. It is the standard that has protected Fijian soldiers and their reputation in past deployments.

Our peacekeeping legacy was built on disciplined judgment, not on repeating the narrative of The Charge of the Light Brigade — where unquestioned courage and noble intentions led to a fatal advance born of strategic ambiguity, and soldiers paid the price for a lack of clarity.

Fiji’s peacekeeping reputation was earned through disciplined judgment and respect for human life, not by placing soldiers in harm’s way where there is no peace to keep.

Jim Sanday was a commissioned military officer in the pre-coup Royal Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) and commanded Fijian peacekeeping battalions in Lebanon and Sinai. In 2025, he led the National Security and Defence Review (NSDR) and co-authored the National Security Strategy that was approved by Cabinet in June 2025. This article was first pubished by the Fiji Sun and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Robert Inlakesh

Passing with 13 votes in favour and none in defiance, the new UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution has given the United States a mandate to create what it calls an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF) and “Board of Peace” committee to seize power in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump has hailed the resolution as historic, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stood in opposition to an element of the resolution that mentions “Palestinian Statehood”.

In order to understand what has just occurred, it requires a breakdown of the resolution itself and the broader context surrounding the ceasefire deal.

When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that this resolution is perhaps one of the most shameful to have passed in the history of the United Nations, casting shame on it and undermining the very basis on which it was formed to begin with.

An illegal regime change resolution
In September 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel to have committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

For further context, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the most powerful international legal entity and organ of the UN, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and thus issued orders for Tel Aviv to end specific violations of international law in Gaza, which were subsequently ignored.

Taking this into consideration, the UN itself cannot claim ignorance of the conditions suffered by the people of Gaza, nor could it credibly posit that the United States is a neutral actor capable of enforcing a balanced resolution of what its own experts have found to be a genocide.

This resolution itself is not a peace plan and robs Palestinians of their autonomy entirely; thus, it is anti-democratic in its nature.

It was also passed due in large part to threats from the United States against both Russia and China, that if they vetoed it, the ceasefire would end and the genocide would resume. Therefore, both Beijing and Moscow abstained from the vote, despite the Russian counterproposal and initial opposition to the resolution.

It also gives a green light to what the US calls a “Board of Peace”, which will work to preside over governing Gaza during the ceasefire period. The head of this board is none other than US President Trump himself, who says he will be joined by other world leaders.

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the illegal invasion of Iraq, has been floated as a potential “Board of Peace” leader also.

Vowed a ‘Gaza Riviera’
On February 4 of this year, President Trump vowed to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. The American President later sought to impose a plan for a new Gaza, which he even called the “Gaza Riviera”, which was drawn up by Zionist economist Joseph Pelzman.

Part of Pelzman’s recommendations to Trump was that “you have to destroy the whole place, restart from scratch”.

As it became clear that the US alone could not justify an invasion force and simply take over Gaza by force, on behalf of Israel, in order to build “Trump Gaza”, a casino beach land for fellow Jeffrey Epstein-connected billionaires, a new answer was desperately sought.

Then came a range of meetings between Trump administration officials and regional leaderships, aimed at working out a strategy to achieve their desired goals in Gaza.

After the ceasefire was violated in March by the Israelis, leading to the mass murder of around 17,000 more Palestinians, a number of schemes were being hatched and proposals set forth.

The US backed and helped to create the now-defunct so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) programme, which was used to privatise the distribution of aid in the territory amidst a total blockade of all food for three months.

Starving Palestinians, who were rapidly falling into famine, flocked to these GHF sites, where they were fired upon by US private military contractors and Israeli occupation forces, murdering more than 1000 civilians.

The ‘New York Declaration’
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France were busy putting together what would become the “New York Declaration” proposal for ending the war and bringing Western nations to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Trump’s so-called “peace plan” that was announced at the White House in October. This plan appeared at first to be calling for a total end to the war, a mutual prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in a phased approach.

From the outset, Trump’s “20-point plan” was vague and impractical. Israel immediately violated the ceasefire from the very first day and has murdered nearly 300 Palestinians since then. The first phase of the ceasefire deal was supposed to end quickly, ideally within five days, but the deal has stalled for over a month.

Throughout this time, it has become increasingly clear that the Israelis are not going to respect the “Yellow Line” separation zone and have violated the agreement through operating deeper into Gaza than they had originally agreed to.

The Israeli-occupied zone was supposed to be 53 percent of Gaza; it has turned out to be closer to 58 percent. Aid is also not entering at a sufficient rate, despite US and Israeli denials; this has been confirmed by leading rights groups and humanitarian organisations.

In the background, the US team dealing with the ceasefire deal that is headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has been juggling countless insidious proposals for the future of Gaza.

Even publicly stating that reconstruction will only take place in the Israeli-controlled portion of the territory, also floating the idea that aid points will be set up there in order to force the population out of the territory under de facto Hamas control. This has often been referred to as the “new Gaza plan”.

The disastrous GHF
As this has all been in the works, including discussions about bringing back the disastrous GHF, the Israelis have been working alongside four ISIS-linked collaborator death squads that it controls and who operate behind the Yellow Line in Gaza.

No mechanisms have been put in place to punish the Israelis for their daily violations of the ceasefire, including the continuation of demolition operations against Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. This appears to be directly in line with Joseph Pelzman’s plan earlier this year to “destroy the whole place”.

The UNSC resolution not only makes Donald Trump the effective leader of the new administrative force that will be imposed upon the Gaza Strip, but also greenlights what it calls its International Stabilisation Force. This ISF is explicitly stated to be a multinational military force that will be tasked with disarming Hamas and all Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.

The US claims it will not be directly involved in the fighting with “boots on the ground”; it has already deployed hundreds of soldiers and has been reportedly building a military facility, which they deny is a base, but for all intents and purposes will be one.

Although it may not be American soldiers killing and dying while battling Palestinian resistance groups, they will be in charge of this force.

This is not a “UN peacekeeping force” and is not an equivalent to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon; it is there to carry out the task of completing Israel’s war goal of defeating the Palestinian resistance through force.

In other words, foreign soldiers will be sent from around the world to die for Israel and taxpayers from those nations will be footing the bill.

‘Self-determination’ reservation
The only reason why Israel has reservations about this plan is because it included a statement claiming that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) — that does not control Gaza and is opposed by the majority of the Palestinian people — undergoes reforms that the West and Israel demand, then conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.

A keyword here is “may”, in other words, it is not binding and was simply added in to give corrupted Arab leaderships the excuse to vote yes.

Hamas and every other Palestinian political party, with the exception of the mainstream branch of Fatah that answers to Israel and the US, have opposed this UNSC resolution.

Hamas even called upon Algeria to vote against it; instead, the Algerian leadership praised Donald Trump and voted in favour. Typical of Arab and Muslim-majority regimes that don’t represent the will of their people, they all fell in line and bent over backwards to please Washington.

It won’t likely work
As has been the story with every conspiracy hatched against the people of Gaza, this is again destined to fail. Not only will it fail, but it will likely backfire enormously and lead to desperate moves.

To begin with, the invasion force, or ISF, will be a military endeavour that will have to bring together tens of thousands of soldiers who speak different languages and have nothing in common, in order to somehow achieve victory where Israel failed.

It is a logistical nightmare to even think about.

How long would it take to deploy these soldiers? At the very least, it’s going to take months. Then, how long would this process take? Nobody has any clear answers here.

Also, what happens if Israel begins bombing again at any point, for example, if there is a clash that kills Israeli soldiers? What would these nations do if Israeli airstrikes killed their soldiers or put them in harm’s way?

Also, tens of thousands of soldiers may not cut it; if the goal is to destroy all the territory’s military infrastructure, they may need hundreds of thousands. Or if that isn’t an option, will they work alongside the Israeli military?

It is additionally clear that nobody knows where all the tunnels and fighters are; if Israel couldn’t find them, then how can anyone else?

After all, the US, UK, and various others have helped the Israelis with intelligence sharing and reconnaissance for more than two years to get these answers.

How do regimes justify this?
Finally, when Arab, European, or Southeast Asian soldiers return to their nations in body bags, how do their regimes justify this? Will the president or prime minister of these nations have to stand up and tell their people . . .  “sorry guys, your sons and daughters are now in coffins because Israel needed a military force capable of doing what they failed to do, so we had to help them complete their genocidal project”.

Also, how many Palestinian civilians are going to be slaughtered by these foreign invaders?

As for the plan to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, the people of the territory will not accept foreign invaders as their occupiers any more than they will accept Israelis. They are not going to accept ISIS-linked collaborators as any kind of security force either.

Already, the situation is chaotic inside Gaza, and that is while its own people, who are experienced and understand their conditions, are in control of managing security and some administrative issues; this includes both Hamas and others who are operating independently of it, but inside the territory under its de facto control.

Just as the Israeli military claimed it was going to occupy Gaza City, laying out countless plans to do this, to ethnically cleanse the territory and “crush Hamas”, the US has been coordinating alongside it throughout the entirety of the last two years. Every scheme has collapsed and ended in failure.

It has been nearly a month and a half, yet there are still no clear answers as to how this Trump “peace plan” is supposed to work and it is clear that the Israelis are coming up with new proposals on a daily basis.

There is no permanent mechanism for aid transfers, which the Israelis are blocking. There is no clear vision for governance.

‘Two Gazas’ plan incoherent
The “two Gazas” plan is not even part of the ceasefire or Trump plan, yet it is being pursued in an incoherent way. The ISF makes no sense and appears as poorly planned as the GHF.

Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will not give up their weapons. There is no real plan for reconstruction. The Israelis are adamant that there will be no Palestinian State and won’t allow any independent Palestinian rule of Gaza, and the list of problems goes on and on.

What it really looks like here is that this entire ceasefire scheme is a stab in the dark attempt to achieve Israel’s goals while also giving its forces a break and redirecting their focus on other fronts, understanding that there is no clear solution to the Gaza question for now.

The United Nations has shown itself over the past two years to be nothing more than a platform for political theatre. It is incapable of punishing, preventing, or even stopping the crime of all crimes.

Now that international law has suffocated to death under the rubble of Gaza, next to the thousands of children who still lie underneath it, the future of this conflict will transform.

This UNSC vote demonstrates that there is no international law, no international community, and that the UN is simply a bunch of fancy offices, which are only allowed to work under the confines of gangster rule.

If the Palestinian resistance groups feel as if their backs are against the wall and an opportunity, such as another Israeli war on Lebanon, presents them the opportunity, then there is a high likelihood that a major military decision will be made.

In the event that this occurs, it will be this UNSC resolution that is in large part responsible.

When the suffering in Gaza finally ends, whether that is because Israel obliterates all of its regional opposition and exterminates countless other civilians in its way, or Israel is militarily shattered, the UN should be disbanded as was the League of Nations. It is a failed project just as that which preceded it.

Something new must take over from it.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz