In light of the impending UN Security Council vote on a Draft Resolution to Authorise an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, Al-Haq stresses that the Council cannot act in such a manner as to negate binding international law, and further emphasises that the UN Security Council, is bound, in line with the UN Charter, not to undermine the Palestinian inalienable right to self-determination.

For the UN Security Council to make any contribution to peace it must ensure that the enforcement of international law is brought front and centre to all discussion and analysis. Israel’s genocidal conduct has exemplified a State which is operating outside the realm of law or accountability, as it continues to attack UN organs such as UNRWA, and ignore the Orders and Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice. To seek, as a matter of supposed political compromise, to side line international law, would be to render the UN complicit in Israel’s violations, to fundamentally break the promise of the UN Charter, and to fuel only ever intensifying human carnage.

In Resolution ES-10/24 the General Assembly endorsed the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice demanding that Israel ends without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which constitutes a wrongful act of a continuing character entailing its international responsibility, no later than September 2025. Even as this deadline has shamefully passed without enforcement, the present draft Security Council resolution aims to seek to legitimise Israel’s continued presence in the OPT, specifically conditionalizing any Israeli withdrawal from OPT on the attainment of arbitrary conditions which are to be decided by what in effect will be a modified form of occupation, managed by the United States.

In the 2024 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ emphasised the significance of Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which provides that the protected population ‘shall not be deprived’ of the benefits of the Convention ‘by any agreement concluded between the authorities of the occupied territories and the Occupying Power’, and stressed that such agreements ‘cannot be understood to detract from Israel’s obligations under the pertinent rules of international law’. Regardless as to whether representatives of the Palestinian people are coerced into accepting the demands of the United States’ as a price for seeking to bring a pause to genocide, international law does not permit the legal rights of Palestinians to be extinguished nor the legal obligations upon Third States to be abandoned.

The Palestinian right to self-determination cannot be subjected to unlawful conditionality. At the core of the draft Resolution lies, the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” (the “20-point plan”) as announced by US President Donald Trump announced in late September 2025. In essence the draft conditionalizes the suspension of Israel’s ongoing genocidal attacks and mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, on a set of unilateral terms dictated by the USA.

The Palestinian right to self-determination encompasses territorial integrity, the right of a people freely to determine its political status and to pursue its economic, social and cultural development, and protection against acts aimed at dispersing the population and undermining its integrity as a people. In direct contravention of this right, the US ultimatum seeks to entrench the denial of self-determination by way of the further fragmentation of the Palestinian people through the isolation of Gaza and its placing under a revised form of alien occupation. The draft Resolution’s conditionalizing of humanitarian aid on the acceptance of US terms aims to reward Israel’s unconstrained illegality.

In its Advisory Opinion of October 2025, the ICJ, recalled the “permanent responsibility” of the United Nations toward the question of Palestine, determined that Israel may not obstruct the functions of UNRWA in the OPT, and concluded that Israel was under an obligation not to impede the operations of United Nations entities, including UNRWA, and to cooperate in good faith with the United Nations to ensure respect for the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

The potential establishment of a Board of Peace (BoP) as a “transitional governance administration” in Gaza, and the authorisation of a ‘temporary International Stabilization Force (ISF)’, managed by the BoP, indicates the wholesale abandonment of international law, and the utter undermining of the UN Charter system. The proposition that the United States be authorised by the UN Security Council to establish itself as an Occupying Power in Palestine is inherently in contravention of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, and in violation of the UN Charter.

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. Al-Haq calls on Member States of the UN Security Council, to uphold international law and reject the Trump resolution.