Is the U.S.-Israel Gaza Peace Plan a Deal or a Distraction?

As the war in Gaza enters its third year, the United Nations marked its eightieth anniversary by hosting a conference on the two-state solution. The New York meeting—officially known as the High-Level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution—aimed to build momentum for collective and individual state actions in support of both a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and Palestinian self-determination. A slew of countries recognized Palestinian statehood before and during the UN conference—nearly 160 states now recognize Palestine, including four of the five permanent members of the Security Council—and others announced various economic sanctions and restrictions on arms transfers to Israel. In addition, right before the conference, a UN commission confirmed that Israel is responsible for an ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Days later, however, international attention shifted to a new twenty-point peace plan for Gaza, announced jointly by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Washington. The UN secretary general and most Arab countries, including the Palestinian Authority, welcomed the president’s efforts without embracing the plans specific terms.

Their unequivocal endorsement would have been problematic. The UN and the conference aim to advance Palestinian sovereignty consistent with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion and international law. In contrast, the U.S. plan reframes the problem as Palestinian radicalization, which it says requires a third party to take over the management of affairs in Gaza, at least for an indeterminate transitional period, until Palestinian institutional reform is possible. If a permanent ceasefire and the two-state solution are to have a chance, the UN and key stakeholders will have to work with the United States to significantly revise the plan toward greater alignment with international law. Failure to do so will prolong the suffering in Gaza, condemn the region to further conflict and instability, and indefinitely preoccupy the United States and other stakeholders with the Middle East.

The UN conference aimed to give practical effect to the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion that called on states to support Palestinian self-determination in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to help dismantle Israeli occupation. The court also reframed the entire Palestine-Israel “conflict” by finding that Israel is practicing apartheid in the territories, that its indefinite military occupation over Gaza and the West Bank is illegal, and that its attempts to force Palestinians to make concessions while under occupation are illegitimate.  

The UN General Assembly adopted the court’s opinion and called for an international conference to implement its findings. In the leadup to the most recent meeting, conference co-chairs France and Saudi Arabia worked to encourage states that had not recognized the state of Palestine to do so. In addition, states participating in or supporting the conference signed the New York Declaration, which committed to “collective action to end the war in Gaza” and an “effective implementation of the two-state solution,” among other aims. The signatories also agreed to support these goals “within a timebound process.”

The unveiling of the U.S.-Israeli plan took the wind out of the sails of these efforts. Although the stated aim of the plan is to reach a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, its main priority is to disarm Palestinians and demilitarize Gaza (rather than upholding international law and supporting Palestinian sovereignty). Once that happens, the aim shifts, for an indeterminate period, to development of Gaza by a Trump-led “Board of Peace” that will manage investments and economic concerns in the strip.

The U.S.-Israeli plan envisions an “apolitical” and “technocratic” Palestinian entity that functions only as a service provider. This is akin the role played by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Under Palestinian law, the Palestinian Authority is an agent of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the recognized representative of the Palestinian people, but the U.S.-Israeli plan excludes it from any governance role in Gaza until it has implemented certain ill-defined reforms.

Those reforms include ones referenced in Trump’s 2020 peace plan, which requires the Palestinian Authority to terminate pursuit of legal accountability against Israelis for war crimes. Shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. president, Netanyahu reiterated that Palestinians must end “lawfare” against Israel at the ICJ and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The demand is especially significant given that in 2024 the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes, including for deliberately starving the population in Gaza. In the ICJ case against Israel on genocide charges, a decision on the merits is currently pending.

Conditioning the Palestinian Authority’s return to governance on its agreement to drop the legal cases constitutes an attempt to obstruct legal proceedings—even if the Palestinian Authority has no capacity to stop the cases. The twenty-point plan’s linkage of Israel’s lifting of the blockade on food, medicine, and other essential humanitarian supplies on Hamas’s acceptance of the agreement would actually bolster the ICC case on the weaponization of humanitarian aid. In any case, these provisions appear to be poison pills inserted into the terms of the agreement.

If there was any doubt about the plan’s lack of seriousness, following the release of the U.S.-Israeli plan, Netanyahu clarified in Hebrew that Israeli troops would remain in most of Gaza and that he had not agreed to allow for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. In fact, the agreement only recognizes that conditions “may” arise for “a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.” It does not acknowledge that Palestinians have an internationally recognized legal right to self-determine in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since June 1967.

The UN conference’s efforts directly conflict with the U.S.-Israeli initiative for a ceasefire in Gaza. The latter undermines the ICJ advisory opinion by deprioritizing Palestinian self-determination and accepting Israel’s presence in occupied Palestinian territory as an indefinite matter. It is designed to obstruct the very international legal mechanisms that mobilized countries to recognize the state of Palestine and impose consequences on Israel for its conduct in Gaza and the West Bank.

Despite this, states endorsing the New York Declaration and supporting the work of the UN conference should continue to pursue collective and individual measures to end the war in Gaza and dismantle Israeli occupation. They must also work with the U.S. administration to revise the twenty-point plan so that it better aligns with international legitimacy. Anything less would undermine multilateral efforts for conflict resolution and international law and run the risk of making third states complicit in war crimes.