The recent passage of the US-backed Gaza resolution at the UN Security Council represents one of the most paradoxical moments of the post-October 2023 crisis: a plan endorsed by thirteen members of the Council yet openly opposed by the two actors whose future it most directly shapes, Israel and Hamas. The resolution authorises the establishment of an open-ended international stabilisation force in Gaza and places the territory, at least for the foreseeable future, under a form of externally managed transitional governance. The unlikely political geometry of its approval and the muted, telling abstentions of Russia and China reveals the deeper logic behind the proposal: a move toward an American-engineered trusteeship that seeks to freeze the conflict at a controllable level rather than resolve its underlying political structure.

The Israeli reaction is particularly revealing. Although Tel Aviv protested several elements of the plan, it refrained from deploying its most potent diplomatic tool its almost guaranteed American veto. Israel’s frustration is rooted primarily in its loss of unilateral control. For decades, successive Israeli governments have worked to shape the security and administrative architecture of Gaza directly, whether through blockade, military intervention, or the deliberate fragmentation of Palestinian political institutions. An international stabilisation mission, even one led and politically shielded by Washington, dilutes Israel’s exclusive authority to define Gaza’s security order. It inserts external oversight into........

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