Can the United Nations (UN) Security Council play a useful role in ending the war in Gaza? It would be easy to conclude that it will not. After all, Israel strongly objects to any major UN role in postwar Gaza—unsurprisingly, given the UN’s previous hostility toward Israel, the failure of UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, the ways Hamas benefited for decades from UN aid to Gaza, and the delays for renewals for existing UN mandates caused by Security Council politics. And while earlier versions of a postwar plan by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for the UN Security Council to oversee the process, the twenty-part plan for Gaza that the Trump administration unveiled this week makes no mention of a role for the UN. At Monday’s White House press conference, led by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the UN received only criticism. Both leaders appeared content with no role for the Security Council in Gaza. However, there is one way the Security Council could help Gaza achieve a lasting peace: a one-time-only, nonrenewable resolution authorizing an international transitional governing authority and security force—modeled on Security Council Resolution 1031 (1995) for Bosnia.
How a UN Security Council resolution could help end the war in Gaza – Atlantic Council
