Israeli diplomats and experts have expressed concern as the U.S. seeks a two-year United Nations Security Council mandate for an international stabilization force in Gaza.

The force is part of President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan to end the war in Gaza, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to in September. However, the broad plan did not provide details on most of its points and did not mention a U.N. mandate.

Historically, Israel has had mixed experiences with such U.N. forces, ranging from the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force along the 1973 ceasefire line between Israel and Syria — which countries abandoned amid the Syrian Civil War and was then replaced by fewer troops — to the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, which, for decades “obscure[d] the vast scale of Hezbollah’s extensive weapons build up … in violation of the relevant UNSC resolutions,” Sarit Zehavi, an expert in Israel’s northern border security, recently wrote. 

The Multinational Force in the Sinai Peninsula, established to ensure the implementation of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, has been in place since 1981 with little controversy. The force does not have a U.N. mandate, because the Soviet Union vetoed it, and comprises troops from 14 countries, including 465 American servicemen and women known as “Task Force Sinai.”

Despite the efforts to attain a UNSC mandate, the current draft resolution circulated by the U.S. would have the Trump-led “Board of Peace” command the force, not the U.N. However, the mandate was a condition of Indonesia and other countries considering sending troops to Gaza. 

The resolution states that the force would work with Israel and Egypt on the demilitarization of Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas and other terrorist groups. In addition, it would train a new Palestinian police force in Gaza.

Jordan’s King Abdullah expressed support for a more limited mandate in an interview with the BBC last week, while also saying his country would not send troops: “We hope that it is peacekeeping, because if it’s peace enforcing, nobody will want to touch that. Peacekeeping is that you’re sitting there supporting the local police force, the Palestinians, which Jordan and Egypt are willing to train in large numbers, but that takes time. If we’re running around Gaza on patrol with weapons, that’s not a situation that any country would like to get involved in.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said that the resolution is in the spirit of Trump’s plan for Gaza, which Israel supports. Still, he said, Jerusalem will monitor talks among UNSC members to ensure it stays in line with the plan.

Israel “would like to see the involvement of other countries in the region, especially of those capable of dealing with the disarmament of Hamas, but we must ensure we don’t create an ineffective mechanism like UNIFIL,” Danon said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“You want something constructive and effective, not an international presence that looks good on paper but actually destabilizes the situation.” 

Oded Ailam, former head of the Mossad Counter-Terror Division and a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told Jewish Insider on the sidelines of a conference on Trump’s 20-point plan on Wednesday that a U.N. peacekeeping force is destined to fail.

“There is no chance for a U.N. force to bring order to Gaza. If I had to rank which forces would go in, I would put them in last place. … They’d be like Tel Aviv traffic cops giving out tickets, and that’s it. No one from U.N. forces will endanger his life to bring order to Gaza,” Ailam said. 

Zehavi, the founder and president of the Alma Research and Education Center, specializing in Israel’s northern border security, highlighted the difference between an “international force with a command center in Kiryat Gat under the Americans,” and a U.N. peacekeeping force.

“A U.N. force is a totally different event, a mistake. It will not lead to anything good, and it won’t happen,” she told JI.

Ailam argued that an international force under U.S. supervision, as described in the Trump plan, can only work “with Israeli intervention capability” to stop terrorism from rising again in Gaza, he added. 

In addition, Ailam said a coordination mechanism would have to be put in place to avoid friendly fire incidents between Israel and the international force.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Assaf Orion, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and the former leader of the IDF team in talks with UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces, noted to JI that “there are a a lot of factors influencing whether a force succeeds or fails, including its mandate, missions, authority, makeup … area of action, relations with the sovereign in the territory and power centers, and more.”

“Currently, everything is being put together, and there will be challenges in the UNSC, for example Russia and China’s stances,” Orion added.

Israel’s priorities are that “the force will not prevent it from stopping terror and demilitarization, and that the failed model of UNIFIL will return,” he said.

Ailam emphasized that this is the beginning of a yearslong effort to stabilize Gaza and remove it from terrorist control, which will require important steps included in the Trump plan other than the international force, including disarmament and dismantling weapons, and deradicalization, with an emphasis on changing school curricula.

“We are now at a very critical stage in the coming weeks that, to a great extent, will shape the future of what is going to happen here,” he said. “We’re not going to have Switzerland at the end, but we may be in a process that will lead to a better [place].”

“We can’t change the jihadi worldview, but we can change their capacity to put their ideas into action,” Ailam added.

France, Germany and the United Kingdom triggered the snapback sanctions mechanism on Thursday, to reinstate all United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran that had been lifted since the implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal.

The European parties to the Iran deal, known as the E3, notified the UNSC that they were triggering snapback sanctions due to Iran’s continued noncompliance with its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to which they are still parties despite the U.S. withdrawal in 2018. 

If the UNSC does not adopt a resolution stopping the process — which is unlikely unless Iran reaches an agreement with the West, because it would be subject to vetoes from the states triggering the sanctions and the U.S. — all of the sanctions sunsetted in the framework of the 2015 deal will be restored in 30 days.

However, the E3 said it is open to continuing negotiations with Iran during those 30 days.

The E3’s move came after its foreign ministers met with their Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Geneva earlier this week in a last-ditch effort to reach an agreement with the Islamic Republic to scale back its nuclear program. It also comes less than three months after Israel and the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, after which U.S.-Iranian negotiations broke down.

“Since 2019,” the E3 foreign ministers’ statement reads, “Iran has exceeded JCPoA limits on enriched uranium, heavy water, and centrifuges, restricted the IAEA’s ability to conduct JCPoA verification and monitoring activities, and has abandoned the implementation and the ratification process of the Additional Protocol to its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. These actions contravene Iran’s commitments set out in the JCPoA and have serious implications on the capacity of Iran to progress toward developing a nuclear weapon.”  

The E3 noted that it repeatedly negotiated with Iran to return to its 2015 commitments, to no avail. 

“Today, Iran’s non-compliance with the JCPoA is clear and deliberate, and sites of major proliferation concern in Iran are outside of IAEA monitoring,” the foreign ministers stated. “Iran has no civilian justification for its high enriched uranium stockpile … Its nuclear program therefore remains a clear threat to international peace and security.” 

Among the sanctions that would be restored are an arms embargo, a ban on Iranian uranium enrichment and reprocessing, a ban on transferring ballistic missile technology and technical assistance, a global asset freeze on targeted Iranian individuals and entities and foreign inspections of Iranian cargo planes.

The snapback mechanism was set to expire at the end of October, in accordance with the terms of the JCPOA, but Russia will assume the presidency of the UNSC in October, raising concerns in the West that it would try to delay the 30-day snapback process. As such, the E3 set a deadline for the end of August for Iran to make progress in rolling back its nuclear program. 

In 2020, two years after the U.S. left the JCPOA, the first Trump administration attempted to trigger snapback sanctions, but the other parties argued that it was no longer entitled to do so. 

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that it “categorically reject[s] and condemn[s] in strongest terms the unlawful notification by the E3 to the UNSC … This escalation will severely undermine the ongoing process of engagement between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. It will be met with appropriate responses.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. supports the E3’s move and called it “a direct response to Iran’s continuing defiance of its nuclear commitments.”

“At the same time,” Rubio said in a statement, “the United States remains available for direct engagement with Iran … Snapback does not contradict our earnest readiness for diplomacy, it only enhances it.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar posted on X that “even after Israel and the U.S. operation against Iran’s nuclear program, Iran hasn’t abandoned its desire to acquire a nuclear weapon. This is why the E3’s move to initiate the return of UN sanctions on Iran is inevitable. It is an important step in the diplomatic campaign to counter the Iranian regime’s nuclear ambitions.”