In just over one week since the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution affirming U.S. President Trump's 20-point cease-fire plan and an international stabilization force for Gaza, the worst fears of many Palestinians seem vindicated.
In response to what it claims are Hamas violations, Israel has escalated airstrikes against Gaza daily, killing hundreds – including two children per day on average –since the cease-fire went into effect. Hamas has released all the living hostage and most of the bodies of those killed on October 7. Yet the IDF remains entrenched and holds over half of Gaza, it allows or restricts aid at will, and the international force is nowhere to be seen.
Some analysts were quick to protest the flaws and holes of the UN Security Council resolution. Yet what is the alternative? The preferred Palestinian way forward wasn't immediately obvious – but it exists.
There are clear caveats to any answer. Hamas and Fatah are both widely reviled by Palestinians, and can hardly be seen to represent the people. Yet no one Palestinian can speak for a range of perspectives within civil society.
But Palestinian voices display significant agreement on some essential principles for a Palestinian cease-fire, peace and recovery plan. These principles respond to the current U.S.-led process but also reflect long-standing Palestinian positions and demands that they have expressed for years.
Perhaps the most comprehensive, pragmatic, visionary plan for a path forward is the Palestinian Armistice Plan, released earlier this year. Co-authored by a group of Palestinian scholars and policy thinkers and sponsored by the Cambridge Initiative on Peace Settlements, this 51-page document is packed with details about how the authors propose that Gaza should move from war to cease-fire, to international intervention, to peace.
Both logical and obvious
Responding to the recent Security Council resolution, the basic principles for a better immediate cease-fire plan range from the logical to the obvious. First, Palestinian critics repeatedly point out that any internationally brokered plan should bring Palestinians into the process. President Trump and his team are in regular dialogue with the Israeli leadership, while Qatar has effectively come to represent Hamas in negotiations, though Hamas barely represent Palestinians.
Jamal Nusseibeh, a Palestinian-American co-author of the Armistice Plan, who is also a scholar, lawyer and investor, explained to Haaretz that formally, the Palestine Liberation Organization is still the sole recognized representative of the State of Palestine and should be at the table.
Second, while Palestinian representatives have requested international intervention for years, they repeatedly insist that any such effort must rest on international law. The current plan dismisses international law in several ways: It avoids referring to earlier UN resolutions – apparently unprecedented for the Security Council.
Despite UN recognition as a non-member observer state and nearly 160 individual state recognitions, the current resolution aspires to faraway, conditional statehood, instead of treating Palestine as a sovereign state now. That renders recent recognitions by France and the U.K., two permanent Security Council members, flimsy.
International law also requires adhering to the International Court of Justice advisory opinion in July 2024, which ruled that the entire occupation of Palestinian territories is illegal and must end. That would mean insisting that Israel withdraw from sovereign Palestinian territory, as the international force moves in for the transition to Palestinian governance. An international force, from the Palestinian perspective, is welcome under those terms – a whole chapter in the Palestinian Armistice plan is devoted to the issue.
Instead, many fear that the current International Stabilization Force (ISF) envisioned by the UN resolution is destined or even designed to freeze the status quo. Nusseibeh noted that Palestinians therefore see it as "legalization of the occupation," or "colonial oversight" as per an article by Yara Hawari, co-director of Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian policy hub. No Palestinian I spoke to gave credence to the resolution's vague mention of Palestinian "technocratic, apolitical committee," for Gaza, the eventual return of the PA, or the suggested, futuristic "statehood."
A third principle, then, overlaps with the bottom line for successful international interventions world over: a final status political end point. Politically, says Nusseibeh, a Palestinian plan for international intervention needs to treat Palestine as a state.
There are important implications to naming the endgame of Palestinian sovereignty as the aim of the ISF. For example, this would imply a mandate over Gaza and the West Bank too, where Palestinians need protection from the latest wave of Jewish terror attacks.
The Palestinian Armistice plan explains: "To support the transition to Palestinian self-determination, the peacekeeping force's mandate should cover the entire OPT, allowing the troops to maintain security and act as a buffer between Israelis and Palestinians. Its mandate should be to not only monitor violations, but also enforce the peace; its troops should therefore replace all Israeli forces within the OPT." More succinctly, Nusseibeh recently wrote that the region needs "a peace force for Palestine, not a stabilization force for Gaza."
Moreover, he views this move towards statehood with physical international protection as the main incentive for Hamas to disarm – since resistance will become unnecessary absent occupation – and join the PLO. Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Doha-based Middle East Council on Global Affairs, concurs. "They would agree to disarm and disband as part of that political process that's in place for ending the occupation," he told Haaretz.
That means accepting the framework of two states. Hamas has indicated openness to the PLO-integration path more than once – many times more than Hamas has ever agreed to disarmament in the present political vacuum.
A horizon for Hamas' disarmament, in turn, could prompt the much anticipated, as yet uncommitted countries such as Indonesia, Egypt, Azerbaijan or any others, to participate in the ISF. As it is, their participation is already "tied to a political horizon and [without that] they're not going to get trapped in Gaza doing Israel's dirty work," said Rahman.
These are not small considerations; the Palestinian pathway would facilitate what Trump claims he wants to do.
Finally, some Palestinians are incensed that the international process does not include a mechanism for Israeli accountability. A network of Palestinian civil society organizations in Palestine included an accountability mechanism within its list of demands of the international community, in response to the Security Council: "accountability for Israel's historic and ongoing mass atrocity crimes, including support for the establishment of an international, impartial and independent mechanism to investigate crimes committed against the Palestinian people."
When asked about Hamas' crimes against Israelis, Rahman responded that if the process for accountability is based on international law, then both parties should be held accountable, including Hamas – but he pointed out that most of the planners of October 7 are already dead. Nusseibeh felt that it would be "helpful if there were some kind of reference, at least, to what most people by now are calling a genocide."
Hope matters
This list of problems with Trump's plan is not exhaustive, but neither are the solutions that arise from Palestinians themselves. Some additional initiatives deal with the most immediate issues, such as the group of Gazan municipalities that spearheaded the remarkable "Pheonix-Gaza" reconstruction project.
Together, Palestinian engineers, architects, university students and researchers have produced a document of extraordinary scope and optimism, dedicated to reconstructing housing, health, education, neighborhoods, heritage and more. What's needed is a ceasefire and a political horizon to draw external commitments and funds.
Among Palestinians, the principles, vision and plans are there. Nusseibeh raised one final item the international community can provide, that the people of region – Israelis and Palestinians alike – so desperately need. Referring to peace process of a bygone age, he said, "The only way that we can begin to climb out of the hole that we're in right now is to provide that hope. And that hope is only going to come if we have a properly constructed international drive towards a long-term peace."
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