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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/world/middleeast/un-trump-gaza-plan.html
UN Security Council Vote on Gaza Peace Plan Buys Time
(New York Times) David M. Halbfinger - The UN Security Council's vote to adopt President Trump's peace plan for Gaza bought Washington time. Time to assemble the members of an International Stabilization Force for Gaza. Time to work out the choreography and a realistic timeline for the demilitarization of Gaza. Time to develop the cohort of Palestinian "technocrats" whom the plan imagines administering Gaza. Time to raise tens of billions of dollars to rebuild the enclave. The U.S. has deployed a small army of diplomats and a cavalcade of top officials to Israel to chart the way forward for Gaza and, perhaps farther out on the horizon, for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a whole. The International Stabilization Force is meant to ensure the demilitarization of Gaza - Israel's price for pulling its troops from the territory in the future. Many countries that are being asked to commit forces to the demilitarization effort want to be told upfront whether their troops will be asked to disarm Hamas and its thousands of surviving fighters. They also want to know how they will be asked to do so, exactly, if those fighters do not readily comply. Hamas said Tuesday that involving the International Stabilization Force in disarming it would turn the force into "a party to the conflict on behalf of" Israel. The problem of demilitarizing Gaza is so daunting that the U.S. has begun planning for a situation in which Hamas retains control of the western half of Gaza, and keeps its weaponry, while reconstruction begins in the Israel-controlled eastern half.