Israel scrambles to block UNSC language hinting at Palestinian statehood

Hours before the UN Security Council votes on the next stage of Donald Trump’s Gaza plan, Israel is attempting a last-minute rewrite. The target is a single line, one that quietly opens the door to Palestinian statehood.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that his position “has not changed one bit,” a reminder that he remains firmly opposed to any Palestinian state. His remarks came as Israeli diplomats launched an urgent push to strip or soften language newly added to the US-drafted resolution under pressure from Arab and Muslim states expected to contribute troops to a proposed international stabilisation force in Gaza.

The contested clause says “conditions may be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood” once the Palestinian Authority undergoes reforms and Gaza’s reconstruction advances. For Arab capitals, the language is the bare minimum for buying into Trump’s highly controversial plan. For Netanyahu, it is a red line.

Critics have argued from the start that Palestinian voices have been almost entirely absent from the plan’s design. That tension sharpened on Sunday, when Hamas and other Palestinian factions publicly urged Algeria, a voting member of the Security Council, to reject the resolution outright.

In a statement, the factions called the deployment of stabilisation forces “a new attempt to impose another form of occupation on our land and people, and to legitimise foreign trusteeship.” They appealed to Algeria to hold firm to its “principled positions supporting Palestine” and reject any measure that “targets Gaza’s identity and our people’s right to self-determination.”

Meanwhile, eight countries, Qatar, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan and Turkey, issued a joint statement urging the council to adopt the resolution quickly. For these potential contributors to the force, a UN mandate is non-negotiable. Still, fractures remain. Israel has already declared it will not accept Turkiye playing any role on the ground, a predictable clash given Ankara’s deep criticism of Israel’s actions and its recent issuance of genocide arrest warrants against Netanyahu and senior officials.

The UNSC vote on Monday is expected to clear the nine-vote threshold, likely with abstentions from Russia and China. But as that deadline approaches, Kan reports that Netanyahu confidants and Foreign Ministry officials are engaged in “intensive talks” with US counterparts to blunt or reshape the text, a final push to erase even the faintest hint of the political outcome Netanyahu rejects.