UN cover for the Board of Peace: Unpacking America’s draft resolution

The United States is seeking international backing to translate its Board of Peace plan for the Gaza Strip into reality, taking a draft resolution to seek backing for the plan from the United Nations Security Council to the council’s members last week.

The Board of Peace, which the White House debuted in October, was pitched as a new governing body for Gaza that would effectively seize administrative and security powers over the strip from Palestinians and bestow decision-making instead to an international entity that could be headed by US President Donald Trump himself.

The draft resolution, which Mada Masr reviewed, seeks to advance the ceasefire beyond the prisoner exchange phase to establish transitional governance and security bodies in Gaza under the Board of Peace, which would also have an influence on the strip’s future governance.

It also seeks a wide-reaching mandate to undertake Hamas’s disarmament, an issue that an Egyptian official tells Mada Masr should not be outsourced and should be carefully negotiated in further talks between the immediate parties to the ceasefire.

Two diplomatic sources — one from the region and the other based in New York, both informed of talks around the draft — tell Mada Masr that though the draft resolution is still at a preliminary phase, it is likely to “go blue” for voting on the UNSC’s agenda before the end of the year.

The New York-based diplomat says the draft emerged from US consultations with Israel, and that Washington has already undertaken efforts to secure broad backing for the resolution from non-permanent members.

As global parties negotiate for amendments to the draft, we consulted UN and international law specialists to unpack what the draft resolution tells us about the legal cover and powers that the US is seeking via the Board of Peace and the “intentional ambiguities” that the draft has left unresolved.

Why seek a UN resolution?

Hamas and Israel only agreed to the prisoner exchange phase of the ceasefire agreement that began on October 10. Other components of the agreement were left for later, including who would be responsible for the strip’s security and administration; Israel’s demand for Hamas’s disarmament; and Gaza’s reconstruction.

A prisoner exchange began on both sides as planned, but, as expected, due to the degree of destruction in the strip, Hamas needed an extended timeframe to locate and deliver the bodies of around 30 Israeli prisoners who were killed during Israel’s two-year aggression.

In the weeks that have elapsed since the ceasefire, repeated violations have threatened its stability, including airstrikes that killed over 100 Palestinians in one day at the end of October, attacks that Israel said it was conducting in response to an attack on the Israeli forces still occupying over 50 percent of the strip’s land.

Resorting to the UN is partly due to the instability of the current ceasefire. The diplomat in New York who spoke to Mada Masr in late October says Trump “cannot hold” the deal as it is. They explain that a UNSC resolution would help “to immunize the ceasefire against any attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to resume war,” stating that the Israeli prime minister was “forced” into the initial deal. The source concludes that, even though they believed the US was not keen to resort to the UN, a binding legal resolution was needed for the ceasefire to keep moving forward.

An Egyptian official likewise tells Mada Masr that a UNSC resolution of some kind is urgently needed to secure legitimacy and a mandate for an interim international stabilization force to enter the strip.

The official frames the presence of an interim force as a means to curb Israel’s repeated attacks against Palestinians, saying, “We are demanding that Israel refrain from using any force when the interim force goes into Gaza.”

“The thing is, we need a UNSC resolution for the force,” the official continued. “We don’t want the Americans telling us that we will go for an interim force without a UNSC resolution.”

Palestinian officials and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres have also said they are keen for UN-backing to support the longevity of the ceasefire.

Sidelining Palestinian decision-making?

When Mada Masr approached specialists to review the draft — including a United Nations source briefed on the legal parameters of UN peacekeeping missions and two researchers in international law —  they all said the resolution remains “intentionally ambiguous” as to whether it will seek consent from Palestinian decision-makers.

Even if it does, securing Palestinian consent for such an authorization is complex in practice, given Israel’s refusal to accept the authority of either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.

To evade accusations of illegality, such as those levelled at the 2003 US-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, an intervention into the Gaza Strip could pursue two routes, according to the two researchers in international law.

Any states participating in the intervention would need either “consent to an international presence from the Palestinian government” or a “mandate from the UN Security Council,” says University of Reading Public International Law Professor Marko Milanovic.

Otherwise, Milanovic continues, speaking strictly from the legal perspective, “there would indeed be an unlawful occupation of Palestinian land by the states concerned. In other words, Israel alone would not have the legal authority to consent to such presence.”

Another professor of international law at the University of Geneva, Marco Sassòli, agrees. He says that without either of the above, “such forces would be bound by the law of occupation and the presence might violate — if it is other than transitional — Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”

If the intervention were to bypass Palestinian governing bodies, it would need to invoke Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter to authorize the use of  “all necessary means,” meaning force, and the power to create an international territorial administration. “The usual formula to trigger Chapter VII is for the council to determine that a situation is ‘a threat to international peace and security,’” writes a third international legal researcher.

After reviewing a copy of the US draft resolution, Milanovic notes that it is "unclear whether Chapter VII is being relied on.”

The draft resolution states that “the situation in the Gaza Strip threatens the regional peace and the security of neighboring states” — it could indicate an intention to pursue a mandate under Chapter VII that would circumvent the lack of Palestinian consent, though the language is sufficiently ambiguous to leave it unclear.

A Palestinian official told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper that Palestinians would prefer a Chapter VII mandate. This could trigger the kind of UN-led peacekeeping force — comprising both civilian and security components — that was deployed in Mali or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

A regional diplomat briefed on discussions about the post-war situation in Gaza said that a Chapter VII mandate would be rejected by the Israeli government.

But the draft resolution also fails to pursue the alternative route to legal cover. “The draft as published doesn’t say anything about Palestinian consent,” Milanovic says.

Securing a convincing mandate from Palestine is not straightforward. A UN source briefed on the legal parameters around UN peacekeeping missions notes to Mada Masr the challenges to establishing definitive Palestinian consent to the intervention, given Israel’s challenges to its legitimacy.

The Palestinian Authority “has its own problems of legitimacy at the moment,” the UN source says. “So you don't want it to be the main actor, and then at the end, or halfway through, you know…”

“To establish something like this, you're going to need to give them full autonomy and independence, and Israel is not going to allow something like this.”

Since leaks of the draft began to circulate in the international press last week, reports claim that the US has sought the opinion of Palestinian officials.

Last week, Axios cited three informed sources who said that US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz met with Palestinian Authority officials to seek their opinion on the draft. One of the sources said the PA was “generally supportive” but “wants to see a more active role for the PA in Gaza in the immediate future.”

But in an interview with Al Jazeera last week, Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouq stated that discussions on the US draft resolution “have not included Palestinians or mediators in the ceasefire.”

He announced that, "in the interest of the Palestinian people," Hamas agreed to an administrative committee that would derive its power from the Palestinian Authority, “even if a minister from the authority” is at its head.

He stressed that Palestinians “should agree on the form that [a security] force” should take.

What kind of intervention?

The draft resolution requests UN authorization for a broad transitional mandate for the Board of Peace for at least two years, or “until such time as the Palestinian Authority has satisfactorily completed its reform program.”

The Board of Peace would be responsible for commanding the international security force, as per the US draft.

The exact nature of the board’s powers and its accountability framework are left completely unclear.

“I haven’t seen a UNSC resolution this vague,” says the UN source. “The draft doesn’t address the composition of the board or its mandate. Is it purely political? Or will they have some kind of executive or legislative powers?” the source asks.

There are two possible routes that have clear precedents: the first is a mix of civilian and administrative powers granted in 2019 to a UN mission in Haiti, and the second is a more sweeping executive mandate granted to the 1999 intervention in Kosovo — a style of intervention that rests on the UNSC deciding that there are no competent Palestinian authorities.

But the draft only specifies that the board would be able to establish other administrative entities, with responsibilities ranging from “the implementation of a transitional governance administration” to public and humanitarian service provision, reconstruction and economic recovery.

The Egyptian official says that the reconstruction clauses are in place because “we want to have a UNSC mandate on the early recovery and reconstruction so that when we get work started, we don’t have anything suspended or reversed.”

Egypt has sought to host a conference on Gaza’s reconstruction since early this year. The official added that donors declined to have the conference “if there is not clear understanding about how the early construction and recovery will happen, and that there will not be an escalation for Israel to strike and destroy things while they are halfway done.”

The World Bank expressed its backing for the UNSC draft on Monday, saying it would be willing to contribute funding.

The draft also skips over who would serve on the board, though the US has previously indicated ambitions for Trump himself to chair it and for former United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair to play a role.

“It's probably going to be a bunch of puppets,” the UN source says. “The real decision makers would be whoever is behind it and whoever has the money.” This would likely be the US, the source adds, or could include a role for the UN itself.

But the parts of the resolution that would normally stipulate the UN’s role are unclear or absent.

Normally, a resolution would gesture to an oversight framework that would hold the body accountable, the UN source says, a task that would generally be enacted by UN peacekeepers.

This was the case with the 2023 Kenyan-led multinational intervention in Haiti, carried out with the consent of Haitian authorities and under UN oversight. The source notes that such a framework is entirely absent from the current draft.

As for the security component, the leaked draft seeks UNSC authorization for member states working with the board and that the board itself “establish a temporary International Stabilization Force in Gaza to deploy under unified command acceptable to the Board of Peace” and which would be empowered “to use all necessary measures to carry out its mandate consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.”

The UN source says the language means the force would comprise “at least military components” but again, it lacks key details.

There have been various talks on which countries could contribute troops to the security force. The optics of a security force run solely by the US would be bad for participating countries, says the regional diplomat. They note that “all the non-permanent members carried messages of concern from member states over who will be running the force: the UNSC or the peace board?”

Abu Marzouq commented to Al-Jazeera that mediators Qatar, Turkey and Egypt insist that the deployment of forces be "authorized by the security council to obtain international legitimacy.”

He further stated that Hamas rejects an international military force “that would come to occupy the Gaza Strip in a new form to replace Israeli forces,” concluding that the Palestinian people “should be the ones to agree on what form of force it should be.”

It is also clear that the resolution seeks a mandate for the force to undertake Hamas’s disarmament, saying that it would undertake activities including destroying and preventing the rebuilding of “military, terror and offensive infrastructure, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups,” a remit that Hamas has rejected.

The Egyptian official also stresses to Mada Masr that disarmament should not be part of the interim force’s mandate and should instead be negotiated between the relevant parties.

Crucially, the draft also leaves the two-year interim timeframe subject to renewal until such time as Palestinian governance bodies have “satisfactorily undertaken their reform plan,” stating that “the satisfaction of which shall be acceptable to the BoP; ISRAEL (sic),” deferring the question of Palestinian decision-making in the strip until Israel and the US approve it.

What’s next?

The US has shared the draft resolution with various parties to prompt discussion before it would be submitted to a UNSC vote.

But both the regional diplomat and the New York-based diplomat said the US has already discussed the draft with non-permanent members of the UNSC and is unlikely to make major changes.

“The American ambassador was very clear that this resolution would have to pass and that the Americans have no appetite for considerable adjustments to the text,” the regional diplomat says.

The other diplomat agrees, saying, “It does not seem that the Americans are willing to accommodate much.”

The Arab group has requested several amendments, the second diplomat says, “especially with regards to the rule of the Palestinian Authority, the mandate of the interim force and the future role of the UN Security Council.” France and Saudi Arabia are also reportedly seeking to expand the role for the PA.

Any changes must be hashed out in only a matter of weeks, they say, with the US determined to secure a mandate for at least an international force by the end of the year.

And both diplomats say that once the draft is put to a security council vote, it is unlikely that council members will veto.