Analysis Proposal is vague and very odd - but it hints at hope

The resolution passed by the UN security council yesterday evening, aimed at turning the precarious Gaza ceasefire into a real peace plan, is one of the oddest in United Nations history.

- Julian Borger Washington

It puts Donald Trump in supreme control of Gaza, perhaps with Tony Blair as the US president's immediate subordinate in a “board of peace” that will oversee multinational peacekeeping troops, a committee of Palestinian technocrats and a local police force for two years.

No one knows who else will be on the board - only that it will be, as Trump declared on social media, “chaired by me, and include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World”.

The board will report to the security council but will not be subordinate to the UN. It will supervise an international stabilisation force (ISF), whose membership is also undetermined, but that the US wants to deploy by January. The countries the US has approached - including Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates - are tentative. The resolution says the ISF will “ensure the process of demilitarising” Gaza - suggesting it will have to take weapons away from Hamas, which insisted immediately after the UN vote that it would not disarm.

There is little appetite among the would-be troop contributors for a direct confrontation. The ISF would supposedly take over security in territory now occupied by Israeli forces, but that too could be a recipe for clashes, especially if the Israelis are reluctant to leave.