ON NOVEMBER 17, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to endorse president Trump鈥檚 plan for Gaza, including a transitional government headed by Trump himself and an International Stabilisation Force that is expected, among other tasks, to disarm Hamas, a task that Israel has failed to do through two years of genocide and mass destruction.
The ISF will be tasked with securing the borders in a way that confines Palestinians, stabilising Gaza鈥檚 security environment by suppressing resistance, demilitarising Gaza while leaving the Israeli regime untouched and training the Palestinian police to control the population. Yes, the force is also mandated to 鈥榩rotect civilians鈥� and assist humanitarian aid. But under US supervision, can anyone honestly expect it to restrain Israel when Israel simply refuses to comply, as we see with the current so-called 鈥榗easefire鈥�?
Hamas and other factions in Gaza have issued a joint statement that unequivocally rejects Trump鈥檚 plan and the Security Council resolution, saying it 鈥榳ill turn into a type of imposed guardianship or administration 鈥� reproducing a reality that restricts the Palestinian people鈥檚 right to self-determination and to managing their own affairs.鈥�
As for the foreign military force, the Hamas statement says, 鈥楢ssigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.鈥�
The joint statement reserves its strongest condemnation for the Arab rulers who support Trump鈥檚 plan, calling their support 鈥榓 form of deep international partnership in the war of extermination waged by the occupation against our people.鈥�
Trump has claimed that all sides agreed to his peace plan, but Hamas only agreed to the first stage of it, which involved returning the remaining Israeli prisoners in Gaza to Israel under a permanent ceasefire and resumption of humanitarian aid that Israel has still not complied with.
Hamas always said clearly that it has no authority to negotiate over other parts of Trump鈥檚 plan, since they involve the future government of all of Palestine and require the input of many different groups in Gaza and the other occupied territories. Hamas said it would only disarm once a Palestinian state is fully established, at which time it will hand over its weapons to the new armed forces of the state of Palestine.
In October, a number of countries told US officials that they would consider sending their troops to participate in the proposed International Stabilisation Force in Gaza. They included Egypt, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, as well as Australia, Canada and Cyprus.
On the other hand, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have all rejected sending troops to join the ISF. Azerbaijan has said it could only send troops once all fighting has ended, and Egypt has flip-flopped on taking part. As it became clear that Trump and his 鈥榩eace board鈥� might order the ISF to use force to disarm Hamas fighters, the UAE said its forces would not take part either.
In fact, not a single country has so far committed to join the force, while Israel has said it would not allow Turkish forces to enter Gaza, and claims the right to approve or refuse any country鈥檚 participation. Israel has also been escalating its ceasefire violations since the Security Council resolution was passed, a sure way to deter countries from joining the ISF.
Hamas and the resistance groups are not alone in rejecting Trump鈥檚 plan. Al Jazeera asked people in Gaza City for comments, and they were just as critical. 鈥業 completely reject this decision,鈥� said Moamen Abdul-Malek. 鈥極ur people鈥� are able to rule ourselves. We don鈥檛 need forces from Arab or foreign countries to rule us. We are the people of this country, and we will bear responsibility for it.鈥�
Another man in Gaza City told Al Jazeera that the plan violates the Palestinians鈥� right to armed resistance. 鈥業t would strip the resistance of its weapons,鈥� said Mohammed Hamdan, 鈥榙espite the fact that resistance is a legitimate right of peoples under occupation.鈥�
And Sanaa Mahmoud Kaheel said she doesn鈥檛 trust Trump, who previously threatened to ethnically cleanse Gaza and steal its land to build a US-Israeli beach resort. 鈥楾hings will be unclear with the international forces, and we do not know what might happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow with them being in Gaza,鈥� she said. 鈥楾his could help Trump tighten his grip on Gaza and work towards establishing a 鈥渞iviera鈥� there, as he himself said before. Nothing is guaranteed.鈥�
The Palestine Institute for Public Diplomac, based in Al-Bireh in the West Bank, rejects the false choice that the United States has presented to the world: 鈥榚ither accept their plan with all its flaws and non-guarantees, or accept going back to a live-streamed genocide.鈥�
Instead, the PIPD and the global Palestinian solidarity movement are working to end the Israeli occupation and the impunity that sustains it, and to hold Israel accountable for its illegal occupation and crimes against humanity. On its Global Accountability Map, the PIPD charts the progress of 鈥榗oncrete and approved actions by governments, local authorities, civil society, the private sector, courts and academia to hold Israeli colonial entities and interests accountable.鈥�
More and more of the world is supporting the Palestinian struggle and the movement to hold Israel accountable for its decades of illegal occupation and ever-escalating international crimes. While the U.S. uses its veto to corrupt the UN Security Council, people and governments have come together to hold Israel accountable in the UN General Assembly, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Instead of passively accepting subservience to the Security Council, the General Assembly asked the ICJ to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation and its legal consequences, and the ICJ ruled in 2024 that the occupation is illegal and must therefore be ended as quickly as possible.
Instead of making further demands on the occupation鈥檚 long-suffering victims, as the US-controlled Security Council does in its Trump plan resolution, the ICJ and the General Assembly have flipped the U.S. script to make demands on the perpetrator, Israel, including the demand, in September 2024, that Israel must end the occupation within a year.
The ICJ issued a new ruling on October 22, 2025, that Israel must allow all humanitarian aid into Gaza and allow UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) to reenter Gaza and do its work there without obstruction.
The UN General Assembly can and should respond to Israel鈥檚 failure to comply with any of these rulings and resolutions by meeting in an Emergency Special Session to organise a UN-backed arms embargo, trade boycott and other steps to enforce them, until Israel ends its illegal occupation and starts complying with international law and UN resolutions.
More and more countries are cutting trade and military ties with Israel, and 157 countries now recognise Palestine as an independent nation with the same rights as others. People in many countries are rising up to protest Israel鈥檚 genocide and occupation, and to boycott Israeli products and companies that are complicit in its crimes.
The Israeli and US governments are feeling the pinch. If the world was passively accepting Israel鈥檚 genocide in Gaza, Trump would not have felt compelled to conjure up his fake peace plan. It is a victory for people of conscience everywhere that he felt he had to try to change the narrative. So this is not the time to give up on the real solutions to this crisis: justice and freedom for Palestine, and accountability for Israel.
We shall see in the coming days whether the corrupt governments that hope to profit from the genocide in Gaza will send their own troops to fight the Palestinian Resistance and perpetuate the Israeli occupation. Are they really ready to sacrifice their own young people鈥檚 blood to mix with the blood of innocent Palestinians in the rubble of Gaza?
We hope that they will instead make common cause with the people of Gaza and insist that Israel must comply with the demands of the ICJ and the UN General Assembly and immediately end its obscene, decades-long, illegal occupation of Palestine.
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CounterPunch.org, November 21. Medea Benjamin and Nicolas JS Davies are authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.
