The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday held a meeting on Gaza and the occupied West Bank ahead of President Donald Trump’s first “Board of Peace” gathering, with multiple countries warning that Israel’s efforts to expand control in the West Bank could damage prospects for a two-state solution.
Council members also pressed for the U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire to become permanent, as the session took place after the Oct. 10 ceasefire entered into force, with Israeli and Palestinian civil society representatives briefing the council for the first time since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that launched the war.
Pakistan’s foreign minister Ishaq Dar said Israel’s “recent illegal decisions to expand its control over the West Bank are gravely disturbing,” and he denounced Israel’s West Bank settlement project as “null and void” that constitutes a “clear violation of international law,” according to the meeting’s statements relayed by the AP report.
In remarks attributed to Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy argued that “Annexation is a breach of the U.N. Charter and of the most fundamental rules of international law,” and said it was “a breach of President Trump’s plan” and an “existential threat to ongoing peace efforts.”
The meeting was held in New York, where the high-level session was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced that the Board of Peace would meet the same day. Diplomatic travel plans became a factor, and the scheduling shift also highlighted what the AP report described as overlapping and potentially conflicting agendas between the U.N.’s most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative.
Beyond the Gaza ceasefire, participants concentrated on what the report described as Israeli steps to deepen control in the occupied West Bank. In the last several weeks, Israel launched a land regulation process that the AP report said could deepen its control; Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen said it amounts to “de facto sovereignty” that would block the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The AP report also said outraged Palestinians, Arab countries and human rights groups have called the land-regulation moves an illegal annexation of territory home to roughly 3.4 million Palestinians who seek it for a future state. Separately, the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia attended the council’s monthly Mideast meeting after many Arab and Islamic countries requested last week that it address Gaza and the West Bank before heading to Washington.
During the Board of Peace discussion, the AP report described skepticism from major allies about a forum that was originally envisioned as a smaller group overseeing Trump’s 20-point plan for Gaza but has taken on broader ambitions to broker worldwide conflicts. The report said while more than 20 countries accepted invitations to join, close U.S. partners including France and Germany had opted not to join at the time.
In remarks in the council chamber, British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said there was “an opportunity” for the Security Council to help build “a better future” for Israelis and Palestinians despite the “cycle of violence and suffering” over the more than two-year war between Israel and Hamas. Cooper added that “Gaza must not get stuck in a no man’s land between peace and war” as she opened the meeting.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told the council that, unlike the Security Council, the Board of Peace is “not talking, it is doing,” and he criticized countries that had not yet signed on to join. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said attention was not on the U.N. session and that the international focus should be on the Board of Peace meeting; Saar also accused the council of being “infected with an anti-Israeli obsession” and said no nation has a stronger right than its “historical and documented right to the land of the Bible.”
U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo, meanwhile, told the council that “this is a pivotal moment in the Middle East” that could open a possibility for the region to move in a new direction. She added that the opening was “neither assured nor indefinite,” and said whether it would be sustained depended on decisions in the coming weeks, while calling the Board of Peace meeting in Washington an “important step.”
DiCarlo also rebuked Israel’s unilateral actions in the West Bank in unusually strong terms, saying the world was witnessing its “gradual de facto annexation,” the AP report said. In the Gaza ceasefire track, the report said aspects of the deal had moved forward, including Hamas releasing all hostages it was holding, and increased amounts of humanitarian aid, though the U.N. said the level remained insufficient and a new technocratic committee had been appointed to administer Gaza’s daily affairs.
The report said the most challenging steps lay ahead, including the deployment of an international security force, disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza. It also noted that Trump said this week that Board of Peace members had pledged $5 billion toward Gaza reconstruction and would commit thousands of personnel for international stabilization and police forces for the territory, though he did not provide details, and Indonesia’s military said up to 8,000 of its troops were expected to be ready by the end of June for a potential deployment to Gaza as part of a humanitarian and peace mission.