Hamas, Gaza factions say UN resolution undermines ‘national will’

Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza have rejected a United Nations Security Council resolution that establishes a governing board and an international stabilisation force to take over the Israeli-besieged enclave.

In a joint statement released on Tuesday, Hamas and other factions in Gaza said the United States-led effort will act as a framework “that paves the way for field arrangements imposed outside the Palestinian national will”.

They said that in its current proposed form, the international military force to be deployed in Gaza “will turn into a type of imposed guardianship or administration – reproducing a reality that restricts the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and to managing their own affairs”.

The factions said the plan headed by US President Donald Trump and backed by a number of Arab states in the region represents a “form of deep international partnership in the war of extermination waged by the [Israeli] occupation against our people”.

The resolution also ignores the daily attacks by Israeli soldiers and settlers across the occupied West Bank, and pays no attention to root causes like ending Israeli occupation and apartheid, Hamas and the other groups said.

While Palestinians in Gaza rejoiced at the announcement of the October 10 ceasefire as it brought hopes they would be spared from more intense daily bombardment and hunger, some residents were sceptical about the UN resolution.

“I completely reject this decision,” Moamen Abdul-Malek, a resident of Gaza City, told media. “Our people … are able to rule ourselves. We don’t need forces from Arab or foreign countries to rule us. We are the people of this country, and we will bear responsibility for it.”

Mohammed Hamdan – another resident of Gaza’s biggest urban centre, which was badly destroyed in Israel’s two-year war – said he also believes the Trump plan was not in the interests of Palestinians.

“It would strip the resistance of its weapons, despite the fact that resistance is a legitimate right of peoples under occupation.”

Sanaa Mahmoud Kaheel said Palestinians rejected the decision, which would bring uncertainty to Gaza.

“They initially said the Palestinian Authority would take control of the Gaza Strip, and we were enthusiastic about that. But things will be unclear with the international forces, and we do not know what might happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow with them being in Gaza,” she said.

The UN Security Council resolution’s lack of guarantee for an independent Palestinian state leaves “a good deal of cause for concern”, said Mohamad Elmasry, a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

He told media that no “meaningful path forward” towards Palestinian statehood had been established.

Some Israeli politicians fumed at the resolution, even as the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a statement thanked Trump, who is expected to be appointed as the head of the so-called “board of peace” that is to govern Gaza.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said if the resolution does anything to further prospects of a future sovereign Palestinian state, senior officials with the Palestinian Authority must be assassinated, and President Mahmoud Abbas must be imprisoned.

The Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the occupied West Bank, said it welcomed the resolution and was ready to implement it.

In ravaged Gaza on Tuesday, Israeli air strikes targeted areas beyond the so-called yellow line, demarcating territory under Israeli military control, east of Khan Younis, while raids and demolition operations were carried out east of Gaza City.

Gaza’s Health Ministry has confirmed that nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 170,000 wounded as a result of Israeli attacks since the start of the war in October 2023.