UN Security Council members blast Israel’s West Bank plans
Members of the United Nations Security Council called on Wednesday for the Gaza ceasefire deal to become permanent and blasted Israeli efforts to expand control in the West Bank as a threat to prospects of a two-state solution, coming on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first Board of Peace gathering to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories.
The high-level UN session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board’s meeting for the same day and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both.
It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the UN Security Council.
‘No man’s land’
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said there is an opportunity for the UN’s most powerful body to help build “a better future” for Israelis and Palestinians despite the “cycle of violence and suffering” over the more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas.
“Gaza must not get stuck in a no man’s land between peace and war,” Cooper said as she opened the meeting.
In addition to the UK, the foreign ministers of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Indonesia attended the monthly Mideast meeting of the 15-member council after many Arab and Islamic countries requested last week that it discuss Gaza and Israel’s contentious West Bank settlement project before some of them head to Washington.
“Annexation is a breach of the UN Charter and of the most fundamental rules of international law,” Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour said. “It is a breach of President Trump’s plan, and constitutes an existential threat to ongoing peace efforts.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said ahead of the session that it was not drawing attention and that the focus of the international world would be on the Board of Peace meeting.
Saar also accused the Security Council of being “infected with an anti-Israeli obsession” and insisted that no nation has a stronger right than its “historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”
Major reforms
The board to be chaired by Trump was originally envisioned as a small group of world leaders overseeing his 20-point plan for Gaza’s future. But the Republican president’s new vision for the board to be a mediator of worldwide conflicts has led to skepticism from major allies.
While more than 20 countries have so far accepted an invitation to join the board, close US partners, including France, Germany and others, have opted not to join yet and renewed support for the UN, which also is in the throes of major reforms and funding cuts.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the UN, appeared to criticize countries that had not yet signed on to the Board of Peace, saying that unlike the Security Council, the board is “not talking, it is doing.”
The Security Council is meeting a day after nearly all of its 15 members—minus the United States—and dozens of other diplomats joined Palestinian ambassador Mansour as he read a statement on behalf of 80 countries and several organizations condemning Israel’s latest actions in the West Bank, demanding an immediate reversal and underlining “strong opposition to any form of annexation.”
In the last several weeks, Israel has launched a contentious land regulation process that will deepen its control in the occupied West Bank. Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said it amounts to “de facto sovereignty” that will block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Illegal annexation
Outraged Palestinians, Arab countries, and human rights groups have called the moves an illegal annexation of the territory, home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state.
The UN meeting also delved into the US-brokered ceasefire deal that took effect on Oct. 10. UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives gave briefings for the first time since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that launched the war.
“President Trump spoke of a golden era for the Middle East. That future is possible and can only be unlocked by resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, removing a central driver of instability and a fuel for radicalization,” warned Hiba Qasas, a Palestinian who is founding executive director of Geneva-based Principles for Peace Foundation.
Former Israeli diplomat Nadav Tamir, executive director of J Street Israel, echoed that, saying a strong coalition of Israelis and Palestinians believe the only way to end the conflict is through a two-state solution.
“Israel cannot remain the democratic homeland of the Jewish people if Palestinians are denied a homeland of their own. Our futures are interdependent,” Tamir said.
Trump said this week that the Board of Peace members have pledged $5 billion toward Gaza reconstruction and will commit thousands of personnel to international stabilization and police forces for the territory. He didn’t provide details.
