The UN Security Council resolution weakens the push for Palestinian statehood ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, November 17, 2025

The UN Security Council resolution weakens the push for Palestinian statehood

The apparent language in the US Peace Plan for Gaza UN Security Council resolution seems to make Palestinian statehood a distant possibility rather than a requirement.

UNSC Resolution 1397 (2002) affirmed a "vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders."

UNSC 1515 (2003) "Endorses the Quartet Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent Two State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."

But this resolution steps back from those ideas, and weakens them significantly. It says (based on the draft text, the full resolution text has not been released at this writing):

Welcomes the establishment of the Board of Peace (BoP) as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan, and in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles, until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has satisfactorily completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French Proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. After the PA reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.

This means that the PA must show it can govern Gaza and it must go through a significant reform program before we can even think about a Palestinian state. Only after that may the conditions be in place - not for a state, but for a credible pathway that could lead to self-determination (which can mean autonomy) and a state.

That's a lot of steps. And the extremely tentative language indicates, as international law expert Eugene Kontorovich points out, "there is no legal or practical obligation to create a Palestinian state" according to the Security Council. If there way, it wouldn't have used this tentative language.

And although Russia and China opposed it, they didn't veto it because Arab states - including the PA itself! - supported the resolution.

So even the entire Arab world does not support a Palestinian state as something that should happen unilaterally. Also, the UK and France voted for this resolution, even though they recognized "Palestine" earlier this year with far fewer preconditions. While there is a lot of leeway in how diplomats word things, this seems to indicate that their recognition was more performative than legal.

From what I can tell, this resolution is just about as good as Israel could ever hope for. It makes clear that Israel must approve any Palestinian state - which always was the case but it enshrines it. This is a completely different trajectory from what we've been seeing internationally over the past year, and it is a refreshing return to reality.