An EU- and US-supported UN Security Council resolution to grant a proposed international stabilisation force strong authority to manage security within Gaza is being drafted, with the strong likelihood that Egypt will lead it, according to diplomats.
The US is pushing for the force to be sanctioned by the UN without being a stand-alone UN peacekeeping force and will be deployed with the type of authority granted to international soldiers in Haiti to fight against armed gangs.
Turkey, Indonesia, and Azerbaijan are also being charged, along with Egypt, as the principal troop providers. Egypt is continuing to be sounded out on whether the force must be a complete UN-led initiative.
It is not anticipated that British or European troops will be involved, but Britain has deployed advisers into a small cell being run by the US within Israel that is tasked with executing the second phase of the 20-point plan that US President Donald Trump created.
The UK is emphasizing that the end goal is a Palestinian state, which will need to be viewed in the end as one entity with the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The UK has already been training a Palestinian police contingent, but the international force will have lead responsibility under the plan.
If the force is effective, Israel will pull back further. Israel has, however, been maintaining that it will have a big Israeli-controlled buffer zone to prevent itself from new Hamas attacks.
British officials concede that the decommissioning of Hamas arms will prove to be the most challenging and are drawing ideas from the Northern Ireland process, whereby IRA- and Protestant-held arms were removed from use, including through an independent verification agency.
Hamas is likely to only relinquish weapons to a Palestinian-led organization in order to minimize surrender connotations, but third parties might be utilized to confirm this to Israel. The process will most likely begin with Hamas’s heavy arms and missile launchers, with the much more controversial issue of personal weapons held by Hamas brigades being postponed.
The UK appears to be in full support of the then UK prime minister, Tony Blair, occupying a seat on a board, known as the board of peace, in Trump’s proposal, which is meant to supervise the activities of a 15-member committee of Palestinian technocrats.
Blair, who has been accused of destabilising the Middle East by supporting the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, has received influential backing from the Iraqi prime minister at the moment, Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani.
In an interview with CNBC, the Iraqi prime minister said: “Tony Blair is an acceptable person to the Iraqis and a friend, having played a role in going to war with President Bush then and ending the regime of Saddam Hussein.”.
“He is a very good friend of the Iraqis and comes frequently to us, and I hold meetings with him as well. We definitely want him to be successful in this endeavor, and we will be with him.”
Blair’s role on the board, under Trump’s chairmanship, is likely to be settled in the second week of November, when Egypt holds a large Gaza reconstruction conference in Cairo, attempting to assemble a pool of international donors and private sector finance. The UK thinks the size of the funds needed, over $67bn (£50bn), is so immense that private finance will need to be employed along with the Gulf donors.
Officials concede that the exact nature of the relationship between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the board of peace must be clarified.
Next Wednesday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague is poised to rule against Israel for terminating all cooperation with UN aid agencies, such as the primary Palestinian agency, UNRWA.
The call for an ICJ advisory opinion originally made by Norway and supported by a UN Security Council resolution will provide the ICJ judges another chance to make clear that Israel, as an occupying power, had a legal obligation to take care of the people of Gaza and has completely failed to uphold that obligation.
The PA foreign minister, Varsen Aghabekian, described how the PA had learned from the mistakes of the past and was now a nascent state. Addressing an IPSI, the Italian thinktank-sponsored conference in Naples, she explained that among the most significant changes the PA was making was to the school curriculum.
But she said: “If we build that curriculum to the highest standards of the world, but children who are educated through that curriculum still live under gross occupation, will that provide them with a story of peace? No. What will give them a story of peace, and internalize it, is when children do not see, on a daily basis, checkpoints, humiliation, trees being pulled out of the ground, the farms being incinerated, and the fathers being murdered.”
