The US has circulated a draft resolution with several UN Security Council members that would establish an international force in Gaza that would have a mandate of at least two years, Axios reported on Monday.
A US official speaking to Axios said that the International Security Force (ISF) would be an “enforcement force and not a peacekeeping force.” The resolution would give the US and other participating countries the authority to govern Gaza and be responsible for security in the Strip through the end of 2027, with the possibility of extending the mission.
The resolution states that the ISF would “stabilize the security environment in Gaza by ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, including the destruction and prevention of rebuilding of military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.”
The Axios report notes that the language could mean the ISF will be tasked with disarming Hamas if the group doesn’t do so voluntarily. At this point, it remains unclear which countries will send troops, but reports say Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Turkey are willing to, though they may not want to sign up for fighting Hamas.
Under the resolution, the ISF will be overseen by the so-called “Board of Peace,” a body that will be chaired by President Trump. The resolution says that the Board of Peace will be “supervising and supporting a Palestinian technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians from the Strip … which shall be responsible for day-to-day operations of Gaza’s civil service and administration.”
While Hamas has agreed to cede governance to an independent Palestinian committee, the group and other Palestinian factions have rejected the idea of “foreign guardianship” over Gaza, and the language of the resolution suggests that it will essentially put the Palestinian territory under a foreign occupation.
The US has also been pushing for construction to start in Gaza on the Israeli-occupied side and not in Hamas-controlled areas, but it is facing pushback from Arab states, who see the potential for such an arrangement leading to a permanent Israeli occupation. Arab officials have also rejected the idea of Palestinians moving into an area under Israeli control.
“Palestinians may not want to live under the rule of Hamas, but the idea that they’ll be willing to move to live under Israeli occupation and be under control of the party they also see as responsible for killing 70,000 of their brethren is fantastical,” an Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel.
