The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) expresses its serious alarm following the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2803, endorsing the United States–led Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict. While CIHRS welcomes all efforts aimed at finding a just and peaceful solution in Palestine, the resolution fails to address the root causes and ongoing structural impediments that have preempted peace in the region for more than 70 years. The resolution as its stands echoes the grave shortcomings of the League of Nations mandate in 1922, which laid the groundwork for decades of dispossession.
“A process that sidesteps the machinery of occupation and the atrocities it enables cannot deliver peace. A just transition must dismantle the structures that sustain violence against Palestinians, establish binding and enforceable standards for accountability, and guarantee that Palestinians themselves shape the political future of their own state. As drafted, this resolution risks cementing the very conditions that have fueled repeated devastation,” said Ziad Abdeltawab, Director of CIHRS.
The UNSC resolution authorized the gradual demilitarization of the Gaza Strip and the creation of a ‘Board of Peace’ (BoP) as a transitional governing administration with international legal personality that will set the framework and operations for the redevelopment of Gaza until the Palestinian Authority (PA) has ‘satisfactorily completed its reform program’. The resolution also mandated the BoP to establish the international stabilisation force (ISF) under a ‘unified command deemed acceptable’ by the BoP itself. However, the resolution did not define the ISF’s mandate, scope, or operational framework, leaving these critical decisions to the discretion of Member States participating in the BoP.
CIHRS emphasizes that such body must be under the oversight of the UN Security Council, with a clear mandate authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and fully compliant with international law, including UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 2334 (2016) and International Court of Justice 2004 and 2024 advisory opinions that have called on Israel to immediately cease its illegal occupation and settlement activities in Palestinian territories, and make reparations for the damage caused by its policies and practices. The ISF shouldn’t be limited to regular policing activities but must be empowered and mandated to oversee the immediate halting of Israel’s expansionist projects, the dismantlement of its outposts and illegal settlements and the cessation of hostilities and occupation. It must also include a human rights mandate tasked with monitoring human rights violations by all parties and providing technical assistance to Israel towards dismantling the apartheid system including laws and practices that have hindered the rights of the Palestinian people over the past seven decades.
CIHRS stresses that Palestinian civil society, and independent human rights organizations in particular, must play a central role in the transition as there can be no sustainable peace and successful transition without an independent, safe, and empowered civil society. This firstly requires the immediate and urgent lifting of sanctions and restrictions placed on Palestinian human rights organizations, including the recent sanctions by the Trump administration, and the implementation of serious measures to ensure the safety and protection of Palestinian human rights defenders, journalists, academics and activists. Independent Palestinian experts must be empowered not only to conduct day-to-day operations, but to also participate in human rights, legal and public affairs activities. The transition process must lead to independent, UN-mandated elections across the Occupied Palestinian Territory guaranteeing the participation of all Palestinians, including those in the diaspora, under a framework that explicitly prohibits military, financial or political interference by all regional and international actors. This process must include the drafting of an electoral law, with meaningful participation of independent Palestinian experts under UN oversight in addition to a comprehensive review of existing laws, regulations and practices illegally imposed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,and the restoration of an independent, Palestinian-led Central Elections Commission.
CIHRS warns that the 2803 resolution not only failed to affirm Palestinians’ right to self-governance and self-determination by not setting out concrete steps to dismantle decades-long obstacles that have prevented its realization; but it did not provide standards or timeframes for Israel to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, leaving it to the demilitarization process that will be agreed upon between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors and the United States, and thus excluding Palestinians from the process. The UN Security Council’s (UNSC) resolution comes more than a month after Israel and Hamas had agreed to the first phase of the US-backed plan to end the war on Gaza. The ceasefire, which went into effect on 10 October, has been weakly implemented as Israel continues to restrict lifesaving humanitarian aid and conduct attacks in Gaza, reportedly killing 241 and injuring 609 Palestinians by 6 November.
CIHRS urges the UN Security Council to urgently amend or supplement Resolution 2803 to include binding, enforceable commitments: an unequivocal timetable to end Israel’s occupation, and a credible process to ensure the cessation of Israel’s acts of genocide,ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and illegal annexation of land – as well as to guaranteePalestinian participation at every stage of any political, security or territorial transition. The Palestinian right to self-determination must be realized through their ability to govern themselves via a democratic and participatory process, free from regional and international hegemony. Failure to do so will only perpetuate the colonial practices and human rights violations that have created the current situation, and not resolve the crisis.
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