On Monday November 17, the UN Security Council voted in favour of the US drafted resolution on Gaza. The US is now essentially an occupying power in Gaza.

As Al-Haq said ahead of the vote: “Al-Haq warns that the impending vote on a Resolution based on US demands, concerns the Security Council’s manifest abdication of its responsibility, and the further undermining and rejection of Palestinian self-determination.”

Quds News Network highlighted several serious risks including:

• Gaza could remain under international oversight for years.
• Palestinian resistance could be disarmed.
• The Palestinian Authority could return under external conditions.
• Palestinian statehood could be delayed indefinitely.

The Palestinian resistance factions released a joint statement rejecting the resolution and stating: “The resolution bypasses international frameworks and paves the way for creating arrangements outside the Palestinian national will.

Any international force intended to be deployed in Gaza in the proposed form will turn into a form of guardianship or imposed mandate, undermining the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.”

Other legal, international law, and human rights experts also shared:

Hamas specifically said:

This resolution does not meet the level of our Palestinian people’s political and humanitarian demands and rights, particularly in the Gaza Strip, which for two years endured a brutal genocidal war and unprecedented crimes committed by the terrorist occupation in front of the entire world, the effects and repercussions of which remain ongoing despite the declaration of the war’s end according to President Trump’s plan.

The resolution imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip, which our people and their factions reject. It also imposes a mechanism to achieve e occupation’s objectives, which it failed to accomplish through its brutal genocide. Furthermore, this resolution detaches the Gaza Strip from the rest of the Palestinian geography and attempts to impose new realities away from our people’s principles and legitimate national rights, thereby depriving our people of their right to self-determination and the establishment of their Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Resisting the occupation by all means is a legitimate right guaranteed by international laws and conventions. The weapons of the resistance are linked to the existence of the occupation, and any discussion of the weapons file must remain an internal national matter connected to a political path that ensures the end of the occupation, the establishment of the state [of Palestine], and self-determination.

Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation. Any international force, if established, must be deployed only at the borders to separate forces, monitor the ceasefire, and must be fully under UN supervision. It must operate exclusively in coordination with official Palestinian institutions, without the occupation having any role in it, and work to ensure the flow of aid, without being turned into a security authority that pursues our people and their resistance.

Humanitarian aid, relief for the affected, and the opening of crossings are fundamental rights for our people in the Gaza Strip. Aid and relief operations cannot remain subject to politicization, blackmail, and subjugation to complex mechanisms amid the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe created by the occupation, which requires expediting the opening of crossings and mobilizing all resources to address it through the UN and its agencies, foremost among them UNRWA.

We call on the international community and the Security Council to uphold the international law and humanitarian values, and to adopt resolutions that achieve justice for Gaza and the Palestinian cause, through the actual cessation of the brutal genocidal war on Gaza, reconstruction, ending the occupation, and enabling our people to self-determination and establish their independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

In the words of Ramzy Baroud:

“UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected…The resolution is a pathetic attempt to achieve through political decree what the US and Israel decisively failed to achieve through brute force and war….

Another historical lesson is due: those who believe they are writing the final, conclusive chapter of Palestine will be shocked and surprised, for they have merely infuriated history.”

The Palestinian people have the right to resist, to return, and to self-determination. These rights exist whether or not imperial and settler colonial powers recognize them. We support the Palestinian people in their fight for liberation and against the occupation, by any imperial power, of Palestine.