Mr. President, don’t let the UN boss you (or Israel) around

In a shocking move, the Trump administration is poised to take a step that would devastate Israel’s national security via the most hostile anti-Israel global organization in existence – the United Nations.

The plan, leaked to the Axios news organization, is for the UN Security Council to quickly adopt an extraordinarily broad-ranging resolution on Gaza that imposes dangerous conditions on Israel unheard of in the nation’s history.  The terms are inconsistent with the Oslo Accords and the framework of settling the Arab-Israeli conflict through negotiations, a formula guaranteed by the United States on a bipartisan basis for decades. The details dramatically undercut the basics of Israel’s rights as a sovereign nation.

The Security Council – whose duty is to maintain international peace and security – met on October 8, 2023, and, at the demand of Palestinians, did absolutely nothing. What followed under the Biden administration were four UN Security Council resolutions focused on alleged entitlements of Palestinians that prolonged the detention and horrors experienced by Israeli hostages, and the war. None of these Council resolutions ever condemned Hamas for October 7.

Now the Trump administration apparently proposes to go ten steps farther. The resolution goes way beyond tolerating the Council’s refusal to condemn Hamas for October 7. Prior to Hamas’s disarmament, the resolution will wrest control of borders with Gaza away from Israel and hand it to the UN. The resolution creates an international force of human shields for Palestinian aggressors should Israel attempt to defend itself from Gazan assailants in the future.

The same Arab and Islamic states who have a chokehold on the United Nations told the Trump administration that they “could not” participate in the Gaza international force without UN involvement and approval. Astonishingly, the United States has not called their bluff.  What might have been a two-sentence Security Council resolution simply “welcoming” a plan developed outside the United Nations has turned into a huge list of do’s and don’ts for Israel overseen by the UN.

The president and his team have repeatedly claimed that the lack of moral clarity about October 7 from the UN has diminished its standing and is a key stumbling block to American support. This newfangled enthusiasm for an expanded UN nexus to Israel’s national security is totally out of sync and dead wrong.

If the president insists on buying in to undeserved UN involvement in his Gaza peace plan, then at the very least, this should be accompanied by UN proof of good faith. In particular, the Security Council must condemn Hamas for October 7. The Security Council must condemn Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian armed groups that participated in October 7 as terrorist groups. And the Security Council must reaffirm Israel’s UN Charter right of self-defense against Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, and expressly state that nothing in this resolution shall in any way impair or impede that right.

Refusal by the Security Council to take those minimal steps should disqualify the United Nations from the role of “authorizing” and appropriating dramatic new control over the future of Gaza and the welfare of its Jewish neighbor.

The Details

The specifics of the American draft resolution reveal an unprecedented diplomatic threat to Israel’s safety, security and sovereignty. Here are some of the most menacing elements, whether due to American naivete, wishful thinking, or intent.

First, although a “Board of Peace” (BoP) is to be established outside the United Nations and to be headed, for now, by President Trump, it is the UN Security Council that purports to take control of the BoP by claiming to “authorize” its activities. Hence, control is handed to the UN. President Trump may think he heads the BoP, and that new entities created will be “under the authority and oversight of the BoP,” but a first-year law student can see that oversight of the BoP is in the hands of the UN, Trump’s new boss.

Second, the UN boss “authorizes member states” to establish a military force in Gaza (called an International Stabilization Force (ISF)). Not the BoP, not the United States, and certainly not Israel, there being zero need to obtain the agreement of the one state most affected.

The ISF will have the power to use “all necessary measures,” that is, armed force.

Membership in the ISF is certain to include governments engaged in anti-Israel actions.

And ultimately, the ISF will be overseen by the anti-Israel UN.

Moreover, the ISF is empowered to enter into any arrangements it deems “necessary” to carry out the plan without any Israeli agreement and any acknowledgement of Israel’s right of self-defense against Palestinians, whatever may happen on the ground.

Israel fits into this whole power grab as a country that can merely expect “close consultation,” meaning no requisite approval or control. Negotiated agreement with Israel is abandoned.

Every state in the new force has just volunteered its personnel as human shields for Hamas. Regardless of the threats that may emerge from Gaza, the prescription sets up massive and unparalleled international diplomatic and military pressure against Israel (with the United States on the side of its brethren on the BoP).

The resolution says this foreign UN-sanctioned army will “help secure border areas.” When the foreign UN force isn’t “helping” to secure, but facilitating or allowing Islamic radicals or genocidal extremists to regroup and rearm – as has been the actual practice of every UN “peacekeeper” in the neighborhood for generations – too bad for Israel. The foreign UN army only has to “work with Israel.” Israel has no control over the seriousness or genuineness of this “work” relationship.

Third, in a direct assault on Israeli sovereignty, the resolution purports to seize control of Israel’s own borders. The Council says it authorizes the BoP to determine “any measures to facilitate the movement of persons in and out of Gaza.” Not only does this attempt to gain some measure of control over entry into Israel itself by land, it also threatens to create access to Gaza by sea, terminating Israel’s legal blockade and creating a direct and proven Iranian arms-smuggling channel.

Similarly, the resolution purports to authorize unnamed involvement of “international civil and security presences,” meaning the UN is now suddenly in control of who is in Gaza or who comes and goes, and when and where. Israel becomes vastly more dependent on the US administration and its willingness to manage the Security Council and micromanage the inevitable hostile moves which will come from myriad new directions – the ISF, the BoP, and all the new “presences.”

Fourth, gone is the guarantee of Hamas disarmament before all kinds of Palestinian entitlements. In its place, the resolution talks about “ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip.” The process of demilitarizing Gaza is UN gibberish for a militarized Gaza in the foreseeable future.

Fifth, it is the BoP that will decide when the Palestinian Authority satisfactorily completes a “reform program.” In a September General Assembly resolution, an overwhelming number of UN member states – including all the states angling for BoP  membership – declared the laughable PA promises of elections and reform so satisfactory as to warrant a “State of Palestine.” Israel’s knowledge of the reality of dangers to its citizens posed by the actual PA is sidelined by the UN’s determination of the PA’s future role.

Sixth, the resolution speaks of “transitional” governance – akin to all the other anti-Israel UN entities supposedly operating temporarily for decades until their actual mission to eradicate the Jewish state is accomplished. This governance is handed to “competent Palestinians from the Strip.”

Qatari sources openly discuss “renaming” Hamas. Multiple countries proposed for the BoP do not call Hamas a terrorist organization. Others pretend Hamas is divided into political and military identities. The UN itself refuses to define terrorism. And yet the UN will oversee the selection of “competent” Palestinians.

Seventh, aid to Gaza will once again be largely driven through “the United Nations” – and without any express exclusion of UNRWA, the UN agency tied to Hamas at the hip, and all the other UN agencies with demonstrable anti-Israel and antisemitic bias.

The successful Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) organization, backed by Israel and the United States while viciously condemned by the UN, is thrown overboard.

If aid is “diverted by armed groups,” then the same agencies and bodies that have ignored Israel’s protestations and have screamed “Israeli genocide” for two years are in charge of finding “misuse.”

Eighth, the resolution delicately refers to destroying and disabling “offensive infrastructure.” The deliberate refusal to specify tunnels, shafts, UNRWA schools and Palestinian hospitals that have long doubled as terrorist facilities speaks volumes about the obfuscation, denial and double-talk built into this resolution.

Ninth, the resolution calls for “full recognition” of “legal acts and documents” of the BoP. This comes at a time when the International Criminal Court, the UN’s World Court, and the majority of UN member states twist and degrade “legal” to mean criminalizing Israelis from the prime minister on down. BoP members will undoubtedly be under enormous pressure to cooperate with this agenda in the name of the “law.”

Tenth, the lie of needing UN approval to create this monstrosity is exposed immediately by the last line of the resolution: “Decides to remain seized of the matter.”

In other words, according to the draft American resolution, the UN Security Council will invent a treacherous scheme intended to legitimize deep UN involvement in the national security and well-being of the Jewish state. The resolution will increase international stresses and burdens on Israel exponentially, whatever fig leaves of American control there might be.

UN Security Council involvement in Trump’s peace plan should be immediately shelved or reduced to a “thank you” after the details are worked out elsewhere with the essential partnership and agreement of the sovereign democratic state of Israel.

Anything less will be a revolution in American-Israeli relations, a disturbing desertion of the administration’s stated policy of initially demanding accountability and change from the United Nations, and a grave blow to the sworn commitment to protect American sovereignty too.