With UN blessing, the US and Israel impose the master’s plan

Adopting Trump's "peace plan" for Gaza, the UN Security Council endorses an unprecedented rejection of Palestinian rights.

(Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)

For more than five decades, the US has used its veto power at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to safeguard Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and occupation of their land. That long record of impunity includes six times since Oct. 7^th 2023, when the US blocked calls for an end to Israel’s scorched-earth bombardment of Gaza and siege of its civilian population.

On Monday, the UNSC managed to pass a rare measure with US blessing. But it did not result from a shift in Washington. Instead, in an unprecedented development, the assembled nations, including permanent members Russia and China, formally acceded to longstanding US-Israeli rejection of Palestinian rights, and with it an abandonment of the global consensus for resolving the main source of all Middle East strife.

The US-authored measure grants international approval to Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan” for Gaza, which foresees a multinational “International Stabilization Force” policing the territory and a Trump-headed “Board of Peace” governing it for at least two years. As Trump envoy Steve Witkoff acknowledged to CBS News last month, the plan is the brainchild of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has “been working on master plans for the last two years.” Kushner does not even hold an official government position, but no matter: as Vice President JD Vance put it, he is “the investor here.”

Under the Trump-Kushner vision, valuable parts of Gaza will be developed into industrial zones for the benefit of allied profiteers, including Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who have parked billions of sovereign wealth fund dollars in Kushner’s investment firm. Meanwhile, Kushner has decreed that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls”, leaving Palestinians there with the choice to live in rubble or leave. Kushner was a key architect of Trump’s 2020 “peace plan” for Israel-Palestine, a de-facto demand for Palestinian surrender in the West Bank as well. Under any future peace deal, the 2020 Trump-Kushner plan said, Israel “will not have to uproot any settlements, and will incorporate the vast majority of Israeli settlements into contiguous Israeli territory.”

Echoing the toothless language in Trump’s latest 20-point plan, the Security Council resolution’s only nod to Palestinian rights comes in the form of a vague pledge that, should the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority sufficiently reform in US eyes, “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” By contrast, a Russian-authored measure circulated ahead of the vote offered a clear demand for a Palestinian state. But Russia and its ally China, who vote as a de-facto bloc, abandoned their joint position and abstained on the US proposal, securing its approval. Both countries claim to have backed down with trepidation. “Today is a sorrowful day for the Security Council,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya remarked, adding that the measure only succeeded because the US was “twisting the arms” of other members.

With Arab countries and even the Palestinian Authority supporting the US proposal, Russia and China did not want to stand apart as the lone obstacle. But their arms were arguably twisted as well. Bogged down in Ukraine, and hoping to strike a deal with Trump that could end the conflict, Moscow decided that inalienable Palestinian rights are newly expendable. China, which remains locked in a trade feud with Trump and faces the ongoing threat of a military showdown over Taiwan, likely made a similar calculation. Their retreat brings to mind an observation by Noam Chomsky: “People have human rights insofar as they provide services to power. Israel provides substantial services to US power, Palestinians on the other hand provide nothing.” Therefore, they can easily be abandoned.

To get Russia and China to stand down, the US also pressed its case with open threats. Ahead of the vote, the US mission to the UN warned that alternative proposals like Russia’s amounted to “attempts to sow discord,” and would have “grave, tangible and entirely avoidable consequences for Palestinians in Gaza.” Any “departure” from the US position, “be it by those who wish to play political games or to relitigate the past,” US Ambassador Mike Waltz wrote, “will come with a real human cost.”

Waltz’s threat is backed by a long past that carries into the present. The US and Israel have come to their dominant position precisely because of their willingness to impose massive human cost throughout the region, not just in Palestine but also Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon. That aggression continues in Gaza, where Israel has killed at least 280 people since the so-called “ceasefire” took effect last month. Israel also continues to block the delivery of basic supplies, subjecting displaced Palestinians to new depths of suffering at the outset of winter. This includes devastating flooding after heavy rains and uncontrolled sewage water soaked families sheltering in dilapidated tents.

Israel can continue to kill Palestinians and ignore its humanitarian obligations as a result of what the Wall Street Journal recently described as a “new position of power after a series of wars that have left it with no significant regional rivals.” Or as Amos Hochstein, a top official for the Middle East under Joe Biden, put it: “The fundamental change that has to be recognized in addressing the future of the Middle East is that Israel is now the strongest power in the Middle East. They are the absolute, overwhelming, dominant military hegemon of the Middle East.”

The dominant military hegemon makes no effort to hide its contempt for the region’s weakest party. “Israel’s policy is clear: There will be no Palestinian state,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said ahead of the UNSC vote. “The only real solution for Gaza,” Katz added, “is encouraging voluntary emigration.”

All a part of the master’s plan.