UN backing for Trump's Gaza plan 'a first step on long road to peace'

The Palestinian foreign minister yesterday described the UN security council resolution endorsing Donald Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza as a necessary first step on a long road towards peace, even as Hamas rejected it as a form of international guardianship with which it would not cooperate.

- Patrick Wintour

Palestinian students attend a class in a camp for displaced persons inside Gaza port yesterday

(MAJDI FATHI/ NURPHOTO/ SHUTTERSTOCK)

Arab state leaders who had reluctantly endorsed the plan said the US urgently needed to set out the composition of the proposed Palestinian technocratic committee that is to deliver services inside Gaza, as well as the leadership of the international stabilisation force (ISF) which is to oversee security. The makeup of the board of peace, the body meant to oversee the ISF and a civilian police force, also remains unknown.

Hamas, still dominant in Gaza, also rejected the requirement to decommission its weapons, saying that had not been part of the original agreement.

“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 favour of the occupation,” the militant group said.