The United Nations Security Council Should Help to End the War in Gaza Now

The cease-fire that has entered into force on November 27, 2024 between Israel and Lebanon (actually, between Israel and Hezbollah), clearly demonstrates that if there is a political will, there is a way to end wars in the Middle East. The Biden Administration should continue the political-diplomatic momentum and end the war in the Gaza Strip, turning to the United Nations Security Council, if necessary, alongside the following outlines:

The UN Security Council will pass a Resolution under Chapter 7 (Article 39), regarding the existence of a threat to peace and breach of the peace, due to the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Resolution will set a fixed timetable of two weeks since the passing of the resolution for Israel and Hamas to complete the ongoing indirect negotiations and reach a truce/cease-fire, according to the specific contents of the resolution, leading to the release of all the 100 hostages and the end of the war. The UNSC will invoke Articles 41 and 42 to implement the Resolution, even if the political negotiations involving Israel and Hamas do not come to fruition through the current mediation of Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. In other words, the UNSC Resolution will impose a cease-fire and an end to the war, even against the volition of Israel and Hamas.

The UNSC Resolution will incorporate the contents of Resolution 2735 of June 10, 2024. The resolution will call for the immediate release of all the Israeli hostages as a pre-condition for any ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. This will take place in tandem with the release of Palestinian security prisoners, the gradual and eventually complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip in a timetable to be coordinated with the PA and a temporary transitional UN authority to be established in the Gaza Strip. This will lead to the end of the war and the disarmament and dismantlement of any remaining Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip by an international peacekeeping force. The Resolution has to be endorsed by the Palestinian Authority, authorizing the deployment of a civil UN transitional authority in the Gaza Strip and/or a technocratic, nonpolitical Palestinian government, supported by international peacekeeping forces. The civilian governance of Gaza will be coordinated with the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in Gaza to replace the IDF and to fill in for the governance vacuum and the current anarchy reigning in the Gaza Strip. The civilian authority (whether UN or/and Palestinian) will immediate alleviate and improve the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, and will lead the process of massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction in the area. Hamas will not be allowed to be part of any governing structure in the Gaza Strip after the war, and its remaining military capabilities should be dismantled, leading to the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Hamas’ remaining leadership should leave the Gaza Strip, in a similar procedure to that of the PLO forces that left Beirut on August 30, 1982 for Tunisia.

There are precedents for this type of Resolution: 338 (October 22, 1973, which ended the Yom Kippur War); Resolution 1272 (1999), which created a UN Transitional Administration in East Timor; and Resolution 1031 (December 15, 1995) regarding Former Yugoslavia, following the Dayton Agreement, which created IFOR instead of UNPROFOR.

In political terms, the Resolution need to have the political consensus and support of both President Biden and President-elected Trump, as well as all the five permanent members of the UNSC and the ten non-permanent members. The United States should take the initiative to submit a revised UNSC Resolution, different from the draft one vetoed by the United States on November 20, 2024, this time incorporating as a pre-condition for any ceasefire the immediate and unconditional release of all the 100 hostages remaining in Gaza.

Time is running out, for the remaining live Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza and for the 2.2 million Palestinians surviving in catastrophic humanitarian conditions. The war in Lebanon has just ended, the revolution in Syria has further blown up the “axis of resistance” led by Iran, now it is time to end the war in Gaza and bring the hostages home.