Trump's Gaza Plan Just Ate the U.N.

Squeamish partners in the U.S. taking control of Gaza sought Security Council approval for their troops to do President Trump's bidding in Gaza. So, will they show up to serve his 'Board of Peace'?

So you’re wondering why the United States sought UN Security Council authorization for a plan clearly at odds with international law — its plan to dismember and recolonize Gaza in line with the goals of Israel’s continuing genocide, and even weirdly echoing the British Mandate (Western control of at least a part of Palestine). Well, you might remember the U.S. did the same in the hope of putting a patina of legality on its plainly illegal invasion of Iraq near a quarter century ago. That effort failed, of course, but the invasion went ahead, international law be damned. Today’s Trump Administration, of course, rarely bothers to even pretend to abide by international law or to take seriously the authority of the United Nations. So why did it seek U.N. authorization for a plan quite at odds with long-established U.N. rulings on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories seized in 1967?

The answer is similar in both cases — and not simply because the name of Tony Blair recurs, like a fairytale ogre, in both. President George W. Bush sought U.N. authorization to invade Iraq because a key accomplice — that would be Blair — had demanded it. The effort was rebuffed, but Bush’s illegal invasion went ahead, with Blair as his wingman. President Trump, for his part, sought U.N. authorization for a U.S. plan to “stabilize” Gaza by splitting it in half, leaving the Israeli occupation intact and with it Israel’s ability to determine how much food and relief aid enters the stricken territory and take military action at will (it has killed more than 250 Palestinians and wounded at least 600 others since the vaunted cease-fire was announced last month), and even to transfer authority for the territory to some ill-defined “Board of Peace” (featuring, would you believe it, Tony Blair!)

There’s something absurd about the Trump Administration seeking U.N. authorization for anything; it mostly acts wholly independently, and contemptuously, of international law and its institutions. Consider, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte is currently on trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague for ordering the extra-judicial murder of at least 76 people accused of being involved in drug trafficking (the number killed is far higher, but the charges are limited to 76 particular instances) — pretty much, for doing exactly what President Donald Trump is currently doing in the seas off Venezuela. Even if those killed were in fact trafficking drugs (no evidence has been offered to make this case), using military force to summarily murder them is pretty obviously a crime.

And when or if Trump decides to take military action to topple Venezuela’s Maduro regime, such an unprovoked aggression will again be entirely at odds with international law. Trump wouldn’t even think to seek U.N. authorization to strike Venezuela, so why did he need it for his Gaza plan?

Because he’s not going to put U.S. troops in harm’s way, in either case (for all the martial theatrics, it would extremely surprising if Trump sent ground troops in Venezuela, though he’s quite capable of destroying it from the air): The counterinsurgency policing of Gaza his plan envisages will be the task of an “International Stabilization Force” effectively answerable to the U.S. via its control of the “Board of Peace”. Trump is hoping that troops would be deployed on the ground by Indonesia, Pakistan, Azerbaijan and possibly Egypt, Turkiye, Jordan, and Gulf Arab countries to forcibly disarm Hamas and police the Palestinians who survived Israel’s genocide to the satisfaction of the illegal occupier.

By all accounts, the easily understandable squeamishness of these countries to be seen fighting Palestinians had prompted them, like Blair in 2003, to press for U.N. Security Council authorization, in order to show that any troops they send to Gaza act under a U.N. mandate rather than under U.S.-Israeli control. Turns out, though, that the U.N. Security Council itself proved willing, in this instance, to bow to a U.S. demand to take control of another piece of Arab territory, failing to uphold the requirements of international law. (Sure, the Russians and Chinese pointed this out, but even they declined to use their veto power to stop it — it seems much of the world has been blackmailed by the threat of Israel, never facing any restraint nor accountability, resuming its daily savagery in Gaza, to the point that given their refusal to challenge the U.S. and Israel made the Trump scheme seem the only way out.)

But even the UNSC adoption of the U.S. text won’t change the essentially colonial character of the plan: The International Stabilization Force will report to an undefined “Board of Peace” headed by President Trump. Enough said, right there. Most of the plan is so vague as to amount to a kind of leave-it-to-Jared scheme.

There’s no recognition here that Gaza is part of what the UN recognizes as Occupied Palestinian Territories. And no recognition in its proposals of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The plan was amended — in hope of enticing Arab and Muslim participation in the “stabilization” force — to include fuzzy “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” language about the hapless Palestinian Authority being given a role in Gaza’s governance at some point in the future, even of the Trump plan creating conditions for progress towards Palestinian statehood. In the mean time, colonial responsibility for Gaza is being transferred to a U.S. led entity, albeit blessed by Arab and Muslim governments and, it hopes, secured by Arab and Muslim troops.

Trump’s “Board of Peace” is envisaged by the U.S. resolution to remain in control of Gaza until the Palestinian Authority has been “satisfactorily” reformed – a proverbial poison pill, because it grants Israel the right to determine when PA “reform” is satisfactory. A democratic, transparent and accountable PA would never play the role of the current PA plays as security subcontractor to the Occupation; the PA is an authoritarian and corrupt Vichy regime precisely because of the role demanded of it by the same Western powers now cynically demanding it “reform” itself.

I’m not sure which is more remarkable: The amount of veto power it grants the illegal occupying power responsible for two years of genocide over everything from how much food is allowed into Gaza and which troops are acceptable participants in an international force ostensibly there to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence (obviously is not what the plan’s authors intend) to when Palestinian institutions are acceptable; or the degree of trust it places in President Trump delivering any version of a decent outcome for the Palestinians. Perhaps it was the assumption that, no matter how profoundly flawed his plan, keeping Trump engaged was the overriding priority driving the adoption of a resolution that for myriad obvious reasons is fated to be another catastrophic U.S. failure in the Middle East. Ask yourself a simple question: What does the track record tell us that Trump wants for the Palestinians? And is it any different from what Israel wants for the Palestinians? Enough said.

Those who hoped U.N. authorization would help them manage any domestic political fallout from sending troops to police Palestinians in Gaza are clearly going to be disappointed, also, because the Security Council has so clearly abrogated its responsibility to uphold international law: Hamas immediately rejected the plan to put Gaza under the control of a foreign authority, and the deployment of troops to police the territory rather than to protect it from further Israeli incursion.

The International Stabilization Force mission looks no less perilous, today, after the UNSC’s adoption of the U.S. plan than it did a day earlier. They wanted a peacekeeping mission separating two parties to armed conflict; what they’re being asked to send troops for is a peace-enforcement mission, i.e. to be deployed inside Gaza to police Palestinians on behalf of others, including the Americans and Israelis, and against resistance fighters who have not accepted their mandate. How many will actually show up?