Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared dozens of times in recent months, and rightly so, that a Palestinian state will not be established. He, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and other senior officials in the Israeli government have repeatedly explained, again correctly, that creating a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the Simchat Torah massacre would be a reward for terrorism.
They not only said this but acted on it. Just two months ago, Israel worked with full force and with considerable success to block French President Emmanuel Macron’s attempt to push a Security Council resolution recognizing a Palestinian state. Macron argued that in his view, such a state would only be established after extensive reforms and the eradication of corruption. Still, Israel rose in full opposition to stop it. Oddly, Israel has yet to respond to the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state by Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and others. Israel’s concern, entirely justified, was that such recognition would trigger a diplomatic landslide.
Then, on Friday night, as Israelis were making Kiddush, the US officially and explicitly announced that the goal of its Gaza plan, expected to pass the Security Council this week, is the establishment of a Palestinian state. The US, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey issued a joint statement through the US mission to the UN declaring that they were publishing this statement as member states convening at senior levels to launch a process offering a path to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. That was written clearly in the opening paragraph.
The Gaza border fence is breached by Hamas bulldozers on October 7 Arab Networks
What was Netanyahu’s response to this statement? Silence. Israel is not only failing to fight the move as it did recently but is acquiescing through inaction. Some right-wing ministers, including from Likud, repeated their opposition to a Palestinian state. But the official decision-maker, the prime minister, has remained silent. And worse, even if he objects, it appears he cannot stop what is taking shape.
The statement from US Ambassador Mike Waltz was released as an agreed text after several weeks of intensive behind-the-scenes talks among many countries. In other words, this is the final product. Worse still, it is not merely an attachment or a side declaration to the resolution the Security Council is expected to pass this week. It will be part of the resolution itself.
Nearly the same language appears in the draft resolution circulated by the US. The draft the US placed before the Security Council states that after reforms in the Palestinian Authority are fully implemented and after Gaza is rebuilt, the conditions might be created for a credible path toward Palestinian self-determination and statehood.
It has to be read to be believed. Not France, not Britain and not Canada, but the US itself is not only refusing to veto a Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state but is leading the effort. This alone is a major diplomatic blow.
For comparison, even UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which former president Barack Obama allowed to pass in the final weeks of his term in 2016, did not call for establishing such a state. Netanyahu erupted at the time, and justifiably. And today? Nothing.
His advisers offer various excuses. They argue that the Security Council decision refers to Trump’s 2020 plan and that this plan contains multiple conditions that would in practice prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. These legal acrobatics are cute. They might even hold water if Trump’s original conditions were included in the expected Security Council decision.
But not by accident, all those strict demands placed on the Palestinians, including ending terrorism, ending incitement and education to terrorism, ending salaries for terrorists, fighting corruption and more, are not mentioned in the text that is expected to pass this week. Not even Hamas, the terrorist organization that carried out the massacre, is mentioned. There is no condemnation of the massacre itself.
International dynamics, especially when Israel and the UN are involved, are notoriously dire. While Beautiful words remain on paper, Israel is left to deal with the harsh reality. Look no further than UNIFIL, Resolution 242 and so many others.
And Trump will not be around forever. Even if Israel might manage with him, though given Netanyahu’s inability to stand up to him on this crucial issue even that is uncertain, what happens when he is gone? Who exactly will enforce the last of the conditions in his forgotten 2020 plan? Antonio Guterres?
The bottom line is clear and grim. The Security Council resolution that will close the war in Gaza does not condemn the mass murder the Palestinians carried out against Jews on Oct. 7, 2023. Instead, it does the opposite. It rewards the killers with a pathway to a state. Just as serious, the one leading this resolution is Donald Trump, the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House, who is doing so with the consent of his close friend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There is only one word for this humiliating outcome: collapse.
