“A calculated attempt to erase the horizon of Palestinian liberation.”

On 17 November 2025, the UN Security Council voted through a resolution endorsing a plan — first put forward by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on 25 September — to establish sweeping foreign control over Gaza. The resolution passed with 13 votes in favor and two abstentions.

The resolution installs two bodies with sweeping authority over Gaza's political, economic, and security life.

A so-called Board of Peace, to be chaired personally by Donald Trump, is granted overarching power over reconstruction, governance, and humanitarian aid — aims that conceal within them imperialism’s drive to extract further profit from the genocidal destruction it has caused. The Board would neither be accountable to the Palestinian people nor bound by the UN.

An International Stabilization Force is empowered to “use all necessary measures” and tasked with the demilitarization of Gaza — a mandate that places the force in direct confrontation with Palestinian groups, strips it of any claim to neutrality, and disarms the primary force in the struggle for Palestinian decolonization. Crucially, it is required to operate in close coordination with Israel’s occupation forces, which have conducted a campaign of extermination in Gaza for over two years.

Far from offering a path to Palestinian sovereignty, the resolution entrenches colonial control. It makes Israeli withdrawal contingent on undefined “milestones” linked to demilitarization, none of which include any Palestinian authority and all of which place power over Gaza's future in the hands of the United States, Israel, and selected guarantors of the ceasefire.

The resolution establishes a “Palestinian technocratic committee” without any guarantee of democratic legitimacy, ensuring that real authority rests with foreign actors. It fragments the Palestinian people by omitting the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the 48 lands and the right of return — a political erasure that deepens the longstanding effort to divide, contain, and manage the Palestinian struggle for decolonization.

Despite strong and repeated objections including from a wide range of Palestinian representatives, the final vote went ahead as the resolution was forced through at the barrel of a gun.

“A vote against this resolution is a vote to return to war,” said Mike Waltz, U.S. Ambassador to the UN, openly threatening the other Security Council members with a resumption of the genocide.

This grim bargain once again reveals the colonial structure of the international system. The Security Council undermines the UN Charter it claims to protect. Governments in the West and comprador allies in the Arab World endorse the colonial schemes from which they profit. Meanwhile, proposals such as the Uniting for Peace resolution — that attempt to rescue international law and represent the global majority — are declared dead on arrival to the General Assembly.

That is why we, from the Cabinet of the Progressive International, reject the UN Security Council resolution, restate our unwavering support for the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to sovereignty and resist settler colonial domination, and call on progressive forces everywhere to expose this resolution for what it is: an instrument of colonial control, designed to erase the possibility that a free Palestine may one day be won.