United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 is destined to fail. That failure will come at a price: more Palestinian deaths, extensive destruction, and the expansion of Israeli violence to the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The resolution, passed on 14 November 2025, was a consolation prize to Israel after failing to achieve its ultimate objective from the two-year Gaza genocide: the ethnic cleansing of the population and the complete takeover of the Gaza Strip.

Gaza shattered a core Israeli doctrine: the absolute certainty of its military supremacy to subdue the Palestinian people using far superior US and Western-supplied technology. Though the occupation was never expected to be easy – as Israel’s history of violence in the Strip attests – the complete takeover was, in the mind of the Israeli leadership, a certainty. In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with total confidence that Israel aimed to “take control of all of Gaza.” That proved to be wishful thinking.

How Israel has failed to subdue an impoverished and besieged population of 2 million people, subjected to a blockade, a famine, and one of the world’s most horrific genocides, is a question for future historians. The immediate consequence, however, is political: Israel and its Western backers, especially the US, understand that an utter Israeli failure in Gaza would be interpreted by Israel’s victims as a pivotal sign of the times.

In fact, the notion of Israel’s implosion and the end of the Zionist project has moved from the margins of intellectual conversation into........

© Middle East Monitor