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

When I despairingly contemplate the horrors and cruelty that Palestinians in Gaza are being subjected to, I sometimes try to put this in the context of where I live.

I live on the Kāpiti Coast in the lower North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Geographically it is around the same size as Gaza. Both have coastlines running their full lengths. But, whereas the population of Gaza is a cramped two million, Kāpiti’s is a mere 56,000.

I find it incomprehensible to visualise what it would be like if what is presently happening in Gaza occurred here.

The only similarities between them are coastlines and land mass. One is an outdoor prison while the other’s outdoors is peaceful.

New Zealand and Palestine state recognition
Currently Palestine has observer status at the United Nations General Assembly. In May last year, the Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestine being granted full membership of the United Nations.

To its credit, New Zealand was among 143 countries that supported the resolution. Nine, including the United States as the strongest backer of Israeli genocide  outside Israel, voted against.

However, despite this massive majority, such is the undemocratic structure of the UN that it only requires US opposition in the Security Council to veto the democratic vote.

Notwithstanding New Zealand’s support for Palestine broadening its role in the General Assembly and its support for the two-state solution, the government does not officially recognise Palestine.

While its position on recognition is consistent with that of the genocide-supporting United States, it is inconsistent with the over 75 percent of UN member states who, in March 2025, recognised Palestine as a sovereign state (by 147 of the 193 member states).

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s government does have the opportunity to correct this obscenity as Palestine recognition will soon be voted on again by the General Assembly.

In this context it is helpful to put the Hamas-led attack on Israel in its full historical perspective and to consider the reasons justifying the Israeli genocide that followed.

7 October 2023 and genocide justification
The origin of the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the associated increased persecution, including killings, of Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank (of the River Jordan) was not the attack by Hamas and several other militant Palestinian groups on 7 October 2023.

This attack was on a small Israeli town less than 2 km north of the border. An estimated 1,195 Israelis and visitors were killed.

The genocidal response of the Israeli government that followed this attack can only be justified by three factors:

1. The Judaism or ancient Jewishness of Palestine in Biblical times overrides the much larger Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine prior to formation of Israel in 1948;
2. The right of Israelis to self-determination overrides the right of Palestinians to self-determination; and
3. The value of Israeli lives overrides the value Palestinian lives.

The first factor is the key. The second and third factors are consequential. In order to better appreciate their context, it is first necessary to understand the Nakba.

Understanding the Nakba
Rather than the October 2023 attack, the origin of the subsequent genocide goes back more than 70 years to the collective trauma of Palestinians caused by what they call the Nakba (the Disaster).

The foundation year of the Nakba was in 1948, but this was a central feature of the ethnic cleansing that was kicked off between 1947 and 1949.

During this period  Zionist military forces attacked major Palestinian cities and destroyed some 530 villages. About 15,000 Palestinians were killed in a series of mass atrocities, including dozens of massacres.

During the Nakba in 1948, approximately half of Palestine’s predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or forced to flee. Initially this was  through Zionist paramilitaries.

After the establishment of the State of Israel in May this repression was picked up by its military. Massacres, biological warfare (by poisoning village wells) and either complete destruction or depopulation of Palestinian-majority towns, villages, and urban neighbourhoods (which were then given Hebrew names) followed

By the end of the Nakba, 78 percent of the total land area of the former Mandatory Palestine was controlled by Israel.

Genocide to speed up ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing was unsuccessfully pursued, with the support of the United Kingdom and France, in the Suez Canal crisis of 1956. More successful was the Six Day War of 1967,  which included the military and political occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Throughout this period ethnic cleansing was not characterised by genocide. That is, it was not the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying them.

In fact, the acceptance of a two-state solution (Israel and Palestine) under the ill-fated Oslo Accords in 1993 and 1995 put a temporary constraint on the expansion of ethnic cleansing.

Since its creation in 1948, Israel, along with South Africa the same year (until 1994), has been an apartheid state.   I discussed this in an earlier Political Bytes post (15 March 2025), When apartheid met Zionism.

However, while sharing the racism, discrimination, brutal violence, repression and massacres inherent in apartheid, it was not characterised by genocide in South Africa; nor was it in Israel for most of its existence until the current escalation of ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

Following 7 October 2023, genocide has become the dominant tool in the ethnic cleansing tool kit. More recently this has included accelerating starvation and the bombing of tents of Gaza Palestinians.

The magnitude of this genocide is discussed further below.

The Biblical claim
Zionism is a movement that sought to establish a Jewish nation in Palestine. It was established as a political organisation as late as 1897. It was only some time after this that Zionism became the most influential ideology among Jews generally.

Despite its prevalence, however, there are many Jews who oppose Zionism and play leading roles in the international protests against the genocide in Gaza.

Based on Zionist ideology, the justification for replacing Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel rests on a Biblical argument for the right of Jews to retake their “homeland”. This justification goes back to the time of that charismatic carpenter and prophet Jesus Christ.

The population of Palestine in Jesus’ day was about 500,000 to 600,000 (a little bigger than both greater Wellington and similar to that of Jerusalem today). About 18,000 of these residents were clergy, priests and Levites (a distinct male group within Jewish communities).

Jerusalem itself in biblical times, with a population of 55,000, was a diverse city and pilgrimage centre. It was also home to numerous Diaspora Jewish communities.

In fact, during the 7th century BC at least eight nations were settled within Palestine. In addition to Judaeans, they included Arameans, Samaritans, Phoenicians and Philistines.

A breakdown based on religious faiths (Jews, Christians and Muslims) provides a useful insight into how Palestine has evolved since the time of Jesus. Jews were the majority until the 4th century AD.

By the fifth century they had been supplanted by Christians and then from the 12th century to 1947 Muslims were the largest group. As earlier as the 12th century Arabic had become the dominant language. It should be noted that many Christians were Arabs.

Adding to this evolving diversity of ethnicity is the fact that during this time Palestine had been ruled by four empires — Roman, Persian, Ottoman and British.

Prior to 1948 the population of the region known as Mandate Palestine approximately corresponded to the combined Israel and Palestine today. Throughout its history it has varied in both size and ethnic composition.

The Ottoman census of 1878 provides an indicative demographic profile of its three districts that approximated what became Mandatory Palestine after the end of World War 1.

In 1882, the Ottoman Empire revealed that the estimated 24,000 Jews in Palestine represented just 0.3 percent of the world’s Jewish population.

The self-determination claim
Based on religion the estimated population of Palestine in 1922 was 78 percent Muslim, 11 percent Jewish, and 10 percent Christian.

By 1945 this composition had changed to 58 percent Muslim, 33 percent Jewish and 8 percent Christian. The reason for this shift was the success of the Zionist campaigning for Jews to migrate to Palestine which was accelerated by the Jewish holocaust.

By 15 May 1948, the total population of the state of Israel was 805,900, of which 649,600 (80.6 percent) were Jews with Palestinians being 156,000 (19.4 percent). This turnaround was primarily due to the devastating impact of the Nakba.

Today Israel’s population is over 9.5 million of which over 77 percent are Jewish and more than 20 percent are Palestinian. The latter’s absolute growth is attributable to Israel’s subsequent geographic expansion, particularly in 1967, and a higher birth rate.

The current population of the Palestinian Territories, including Gaza, is more than 5.5 million. Compare this with the following brief sample of much smaller self-determination countries —  Slovenia (2.2 million), Timor-Leste (1.4 million), and Tonga (104,000).

The population size of the Palestinian Territories is more than half that of Israel. Closer to home it is a little higher than New Zealand.

The only reason why Palestinians continue to be denied the right to self-determination is the Zionist ideological claim linked to the biblical time of Jesus Christ and its consequential strategy of ethnic cleansing.

If it was not for the opposition of the United States, then this right would not have been denied. It has been this opposition that has enabled Israel’s strategy.

Comparative value of Palestinian lives
The use of genocide as the latest means of achieving ethnic cleansing highlights how Palestinian lives are valued compared with Israeli lives.

While not of the same magnitude appropriated comparisons have been made with the horrific ethnic cleansing of Jews through the means of the holocaust by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Per capita the scale of the magnitude gap is reduced considerably.

Since October 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (and confirmed by the World Health Organisation) more than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed. Of those killed over 16,500 were children. Compare this with less than 2000 Israelis killed.

Further, at least 310 UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) team members have been killed along with over 200 journalists and media workers. Add to this around 1400 healthcare workers including doctors and nurses.

What also can’t be forgotten is the increasing Israeli ethnic cleansing on the occupied West Bank. Around 950 Palestinians, including around 200 children, have also been killed during this same period.

Time for New Zealand to recognise Palestine
The above discussion is in the context of the three justifications for supporting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians strategy that goes back to 1948 and which, since October 2023, is being accelerated by genocide.

• First, it requires the conviction that the theology of Judaism in Palestine in the biblical times following the birth of Jesus Christ trumps both the significantly changing demography from the 5th century at least to the mid-20th century and the numerical predominance of Arabs in Mandate Palestine;
• Second, and consequentially, it requires the conviction that while Israelis are entitled to self-determination, Palestinians are not; and
• Finally, it requires that Israeli lives are much more valuable than Palestinian lives. In fact, the latter have no value at all.

Unless the government, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, shares these convictions (especially the “here and now” second and third) then it should do the right thing first by unequivocally saying so, and then by recognising the right of Palestine to be an independent state.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz