The current Israel-Hamas ceasefire imposed by United States President Donald Trump cannot fix either Israel’s devastation of Gaza or the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict because it fails to address its underlying causes or present a path forward into a viable future. And yet, the situation in the Occupied State of Palestine (OPT) calls out desperately for the deployment of international forces, which, in the right context, could be an ideal opportunity to showcase a successful peacekeeping operation. What is necessary, as laid out in the Palestinian Armistice Plan, are (1) a legitimate political framework and horizon for the peacekeeping operation, (2) a geographical scope of the operation that covers the whole OPT, and (3) a real mandate – i.e., the ability to act.
The so-called ceasefire, under which hundreds of Palestinians continue to be killed or die of preventable disease and hunger, is not an agreement between the parties to the conflict, namely the Israelis and the Palestinians. Similarly, the proposed United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) calling for the deployment of an International Stabilization Force in part of the Gaza Strip (itself a part of the OPT), whatever its wording, is bound to fail unless certain essential prerequisites are met. In this respect, both are a continuation of previous failed approaches.
Failed past international deployments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
The two past experiences with international forces inside the OPT had limited scope and success. The UN Emergency Force, established after Israel (along with the United Kingdom and France) attacked Egypt, in 1957, had the limited aim of ensuring the orderly withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. The Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was established in 1994 through a bilateral agreement between Israel and the PLO following a UNSCR calling for such a presence under the Oslo I Accord. This agreement provided only monitoring and nonpublic reporting on the human rights situation and international law violations in Hebron. While the observers were able to discourage some of the worst Israeli actions, they were powerless to stop the growing daily violence inflicted on Palestinian Hebronites by Israeli forces and settlers. In any case, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally refused to renew the TIPH mandate in 2019.
In order to avoid a repeat failure that will further entrench the status quo of an illegal occupation of Palestine without accountability for Israel, including for atrocities in Gaza, a UN-mandated international peacekeeping force is essential for peace between Israelis and Palestinians (or Israel and Palestine), but it must enter as part of a holistic structure founded upon rights and accountability.
International Peace Force must take into account recognized legal frameworks
As a starting point, it is essential to recall that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been ongoing for decades, is not merely a conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza; it is a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Thus, a sustainable agreement to bring a pause or an end to the conflict needs to bind both parties to the conflict – Palestinians and Israelis – and cover all territory and people, not only Gaza or a part of it. The Palestinian Armistice Plan, published in June 2025, sets out the way to do this through a comprehensive armistice agreement between an inclusive Palestine Liberation organization (PLO), as the principal governance body of the State of Palestine and the recognized representative of the entire Palestinian people, on the one hand, and Israel on the other, thereby establishing a political framework for a viable transition and for a functional and effective international peacekeeping force.
Second, it is important to recall the clear status of the OPT under international law, most recently reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinion of June 2024 and again in its Advisory Opinion of October 22, 2025, as well as the growing international recognition of the State of Palestine as sovereign over that territory. This means that only the State of Palestine, represented by the PLO as its principal, can legally consent to and decide on international forces within its territory. And, equally, that all other states are prohibited from acting in such a manner as to support or aid or abet the continued illegal occupation – including by providing international forces outside the context of the Palestinian State or its consent. While in practice, Israeli consent will also be needed, this is not a legal requirement; and, indeed, as Israel is forced to come to terms with the results and implications of its actions, there is a growing argument for bypassing Israeli consent entirely – indeed, what government that has committed a genocide is given a say in whether the population it has been murdering in a foreign country should be protected, or by whom?
Third, unless the PLO agrees otherwise, the forces must be under a UN mandate. The deployment of UN-mandated peacekeeping forces in the OPT has been called for in several UN resolutions and has been a regular request of the PLO on behalf of Palestine. The appeal for their deployment was also repeated in the Communique of the Extraordinary Arab Summit on March 4, 2025, referencing the Bahrain Declaration of May 2024 that made it a basis for normalizing relations with Israel. The PLO should, once again, formally request that UN forces be provided to protect civilians in the whole OPT, to ensure the State’s integrity and to safeguard Israel’s security. Without such a presence, Israeli military and settler attacks against Palestinian civilians, the destruction of Palestinian homes and infrastructure, and the ethnic cleansing of communities in Gaza and the West Bank will continue unchecked.
A proposed UN Security Council Resolution that avoids these questions and attempts to introduce an “International Stabilization Force” without reference to the operable international legal framework or without respect for Palestinian sovereignty, will be rejected by Palestinians, as well as by many of the countries that whose involvement is necessary to provide forces and funding for the operation. In fact, it would be counterproductive to proceed with this lumpen force, which would exacerbate Palestinian resistance and encourage support for Hamas, potentially leading to friction and more casualties on both sides. The aim of the international peace force must be to ensure that a ceasefire is maintained and security is provided to underpin a transition to Palestinian self-determination, the end of the conflict.
The geographical scope of Israeli violence in Gaza and the West Bank
The unprecedented level of Israeli violence in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) which has been obscured by the obscene extent of genocidal violence unleashed on Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years, is worsening daily, as is the de facto (and possibly de jure) annexation of the territory. With a temporary and limited ceasefire in Gaza barely holding, it is highly likely that extremists in Israel (both in the government and out) will be encouraged by their perceived success in erasing 90 percent of Gaza’s homes, infrastructure and productive agricultural land, and a large percentage of its people, without serious consequences.
Equally, the same perceived lack of consequences – the lack of accountability for Israeli war crimes – will lead to a collapse of the current security architecture in the West Bank, which is barely holding up in any case. The Palestinian Authority, whose security forces have done an extraordinarily effective job of quashing dissent and keeping Israel and Israelis safe, is being deliberately undermined by Israel, and is on the verge of political and financial collapse. With this political vacuum, intense daily violence without protection, growing anger at the lack of Israeli accountability, and the absence of a political framework of horizon, Palestinian resistance is bound to soar in the West Bank, feeding an unceasingly uncontrollable spiral of violence, and ensuring the coming decade will be insecure for both Palestinians and Israelis.
To avoid this, it is fundamental that the peacekeepers are deployed not only in Gaza – or in part of Gaza, as current versions of the ISF seem to provide – but across and throughout the OPT, keeping in mind that the Oslo framework is now null and void – its continued and repeated violations by Israel, both in Gaza over the past two years and also across the West Bank, mean that the former subdivision of the OPT into Areas “A” ,“B” and “C” are irrelevant for legal purposes, and also for purposes of the deployment of peacekeepers. These peacekeepers should ideally replace all Israeli forces within the entire OPT, as well as work with Israeli and Palestinian security at the borders between the OPT and Israel. In practice, there will need to be ways of dealing with settlers and settlements in the OPT, which will probably require joint patrols. But it is crucial that these joint patrols during the transition period provide security to both sides – to the settlers, but also to the villagers trying to harvest their olives and tend their flocks.
As a final, but essential, point, the provision of security to Palestinians in the OPT is crucial to underpinning the development and reform of Palestinian institutions. It is simply not realistic to envisage elections, for instance, in the absence of safety and security throughout the OPT in order to organize election campaigns and voting. The political context – a secure State of Palestine – will also provide the political framework within which to campaign, and a new horizon for citizens beyond the context of conflict.
Monitoring violations without protection will not lead to long-term peace
A mandate only to monitor violations without enforcement and protection capability, cannot support a transition to a long-term peace – it is simply not fit for this purpose. Thus, the international force’s mandate should be to not only monitor violations, but also enforce the peace, to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis are kept safe. They must be present to protect Palestinian villagers from settlers, just as they are there to protect Israelis. The peacekeeping force should also bolster the exercise of Palestinian sovereignty, by supporting Palestinian law enforcement and internal security in and across the OPT, until Palestinian forces have been reconstituted and are able to take over.
Politically, it is essential that the peacekeepers are perceived to be acting with this goal. While for Israelis, security and safety will be guaranteed by the presence of this international force, and the sense of threat will hopefully subside as time passes, for Palestinians on the other hand, security and safety are intricately interwoven with freedom from occupation. Thus, the peacekeepers must be seen as enabling the transition to, and respecting the sovereignty of, a free Palestine. By doing so, they will be welcomed as friends and further bring calm to the situation, minimizing reasons for friction with the Palestinians and undermining possible support for the “spoilers”.
This plays out at the international level as well. The push to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needs to find expression on the ground, not only in legal and political recognitions of the State of Palestine, or declarations of the need to support Palestinian agency and ensure Israeli accountability. Arab and Moslem States have long declared their readiness to participate actively in bringing peace to the region on this basis, including full regional integration for Israel. They can and will provide troops and support aid and reconstruction, but not under an Israeli flag and not without Palestinian statehood. Regional stability is an interest of both the immediate region and further afield, and the EU and European countries are well aware of the importance of peace, even at the domestic level. No country will want to be part of a force that ends up somehow in conflict with the Palestinians and denying them their basic rights.
A UN-mandated peacekeeping mission is essential but peace is more than stabilization
It is also of crucial importance that the international peacekeepers be properly trained and have appropriate command and legal structures. Private security contractors – inexperienced and unregulated at best – cannot and must not replace blue helmets. If nothing else, the thousands of civilians killed by the fiasco of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation should be reason enough to ensure that this type of private enterprise should never be allowed again.
To conclude: A UN-mandated peacekeeping mission is essential, and it will work as long as it enters at the request of the PLO and has a clear objective to support the end of occupation. Foreign forces that are only present in a small sliver of the OPT, with the primary objective of ensuring Israeli security while Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestine – especially if Israel continues to kill, maim, destroy and steal in the other parts of the OPT – is doomed to failure. It is also in direct opposition to international law, as expressed in the ICJ advisory opinion of July 2024, and would be a violation of the duties of member states.
As the UNs Security Council debates wording for a resolution authorizing an International Stabilization Force under the President Trump’s Plan, it is worth remembering that stabilization was the Israeli policy that led to October 7 and the genocide that has followed. The situation in Palestine and Israel does not need to be “stabilized” – it needs to be resolved.
Dr. Jamal Nusseibeh is a Palestinian-American scholar, lawyer, and investor, and a co-author of the Palestinian Armistice Plan. He is a Board Member of the of the Middle East Policy Council and was a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. He taught law and politics and was Vice President of Al Quds University in Jerusalem, and was Columbia University’s inaugural Palestine and Law Fellow.
