On Nov. 17, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2803, authorizing an “international stabilization force” for Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the measure, effusively praising U.S. President Donald Trump for his role in getting it approved.
It’s not hard to understand why. The resolution is best understood as the clearest diplomatic expression of Israel’s military victory – not only over Hamas, but over the entire Palestinian national movement. It removes Palestinian control over the Gaza Strip, mandates the disarmament of armed groups, and installs an external authority under U.S. leadership without offering a credible path to self-determination, statehood, or even the familiar parameters of a two-state solution. These are profound shifts. But precisely because the resolution symbolizes one side’s sweeping triumph, it is unlikely to end the conflict. Far more plausibly, it will simply reshape its next phase.
The resolution translates Israel’s battlefield gains into a new governing architecture. It transfers legal authority over Gaza from Palestinians to the United States by establishing a U.S.-designed “board of peace” and granting it international legal status. The Security Council does not define who sits on this body or how it is constituted. It simply “welcomes” its establishment – effectively outsourcing Gaza’s new oversight authority to the Trump Plan, which places the board under the chairmanship of the U.S. president and leaves its membership to be determined outside the UN framework.
In effect, Gaza will not be governed by its inhabitants, whether through new elections or through existing Palestinian institutions. Its administration will remain in the hands of the board of peace until the Palestinian Authority “has satisfactorily completed its reform program… and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza.” These are undefined and unachievable benchmarks, which will be judged by the very body that should step aside when they are supposedly met. A Palestinian role is confined to an “apolitical, technocratic committee” managing day-to-day administration “supervised and supported” by the board of peace. This is not sovereignty. It is closer to municipal administration under foreign authority.
The resolution also entrusts the United States, rather than any Palestinian actor, with defining the political relationship between Palestinians and Israel. When the Board of Peace deems conditions ripe, the “United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon.” In other words, Gaza’s political future – like its security, governance, and economy – has been moved firmly out of Palestinian hands.
UNSCR 2803 also codifies Israel’s long-standing war aim: the elimination of Palestinian armed resistance in Gaza. The resolution authorizes an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to “ensure the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip… and the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.” This is the most explicit legal prohibition yet against Palestinian armed action in Gaza. The ISF may use “all necessary measures” to implement it, and the Israel Defense Forces withdraw only when milestones “linked to demilitarization” are fulfilled.
The resolution’s architecture is straightforward: security first, reconstruction second, politics later – perhaps much later. The board of peace and the international stabilization force are empowered to coordinate Gaza’s redevelopment. A donor-run trust fund – likely funded by the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and the EU – will manage Gaza’s economy.
But none of this means the conflict is ending. Recent history suggests the opposite.
After Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the U.S. brokered an agreement requiring the Palestine Liberation Organization to hand over heavy weapons and evacuate Beirut under multinational protection. Some 11,000 fighters left for Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan, Syria, and Algeria. Washington and its allies believed they had engineered a new, stable order in Lebanon. It collapsed within weeks. President-elect Bashir Gemayel was assassinated. On October 23, 1983, suicide bombings killed 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers. Out of the resulting vacuum emerged Hezbollah: stronger, more disciplined, more deeply rooted. By early 1984, U.S. forces withdrew.
Afghanistan followed a similar pattern. The Taliban regime collapsed within weeks of the U.S. invasion in 2001. The movement appeared shattered and irrelevant. Yet armed actors with ideological cohesion and social roots rarely disappear. By 2006 the Taliban insurgency had hardened, and by 2021 it retook Kabul.
What does this mean for Gaza?
Hamas’s ideology leaves little to the imagination: armed resistance is not merely a political tool; it is deeply entwined with identity, tied to religious jihad and the assumed holiness and indivisibility of Palestine. Palestinian public opinion – even battered by catastrophe – remains overwhelmingly supportive of armed struggle as the way forward, far beyond Hamas’s own supporters. This is not to excuse the use of terrorism; it is merely a recognition of Palestinian realities. Clearly, Hamas has no incentive to disarm or abandon armed resistance.
Yet the temptation to impose disarmament by force needs to be tempered by reality. It is unlikely that a multinational force would succeed in confiscating Hamas weapons. Egypt and Jordan, the countries most threatened by Gaza’s instability, have shown themselves too risk-averse to confront Hamas. Saudi Arabia and the UAE typically operate through local partners rather than deploying their own forces, and in Gaza there is no reliable local actor through whom they can meaningfully shape the situation.
Yet Hamas, ideological as it might be, has also demonstrated pragmatic flexibility when conditions demanded it. It has accepted lengthy truces, entered indirect negotiations, and calibrated its military and political strategies according to domestic and regional pressures.
Thus the architects of Resolution 2803, and the new governors of Gaza, will need ways to persuade Hamas to disarm or cooperate. Two of Hamas’s regional patrons – Turkey and Qatar – are part of the Trump Plan, though with unclear commitment to its full implementation. More importantly, the group’s third patron, Iran, remains outside. President Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in a deal with Iran, even suggesting that a peace treaty with Israel is attainable. Bringing Iran on board the disarmament track would be a necessary first step in that direction.
Linking progress in Gaza to improvements in the West Bank – currently under serious pressure from settlers – and strengthening the role of the Palestinian component in Gaza’s governance could also create domestic pressure on Hamas to compromise. Domestic and regional pressure, applied together, offer the most realistic avenues for progress.
UNSCR 2803 reorganizes Gaza’s governance, security, and economy on a scale unseen since 2005. It may reduce violence in the short term and may even deliver economic recovery. But unless the resolution’s backers confront the political roots of Gaza’s instability – armed resistance ideology, regional patronage networks, and Palestinian demands for self-determination – the deeper conflict will reassert itself.
Ezzedine Fishere
Ezzedine Fishere is an Egyptian novelist and journalist and a Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College.
