The U.N. Security Council’s approval of a U.S. resolution to deploy an international stabilization force in Gaza is being welcomed as the long-awaited turning point. Thirteen members backed the measure, giving President Donald Trump’s cease-fire plan new political momentum and setting the stage for a “Board of Peace,” a newly trained Palestinian police force, and a multinational mission tasked with guarding borders, protecting civilians, securing aid routes and overseeing Hamas’ disarmament through 2027.
But the plan collides with a reality Washington has been reluctant to confront: Hamas is resurging, not disappearing. As Israeli troops withdrew behind the yellow line and the cease-fire took hold, Hamas rapidly reasserted itself in Gaza’s streets — not as a conventional militia but as a police force. It filled the security vacuum with a competence no other authority has demonstrated since the war began. Criminal gangs vanished.
Looting collapsed. Aid theft dropped from more than 80% to around 5%. Families can move, sleep and receive assistance without predatory militias at every corner.
This has reshaped public sentiment. Gazans haven’t forgiven Hamas for Oct. 7 or embraced its ideology, but they do credit it with restoring the most basic public good: order. A new Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll shows over half rating Hamas’ wartime performance positively, and 41% saying they would vote for the group — its highest support in nearly two years. Even bitter critics concede that people “want order, safety and a normal life.”
That instinct directly complicates the U.S. plan’s core requirement: that Hamas disarm and cede authority to an international force. Most Gazans oppose both disarmament and foreign troops. Even those furious with Hamas fear that stripping the group of weapons — without an immediate, trusted replacement — would reopen the door to the chaos that dominated earlier this year.
Against this backdrop, the proposed stabilization force looks less like a solution than a diplomatic mirage. History makes the problem obvious. U.N. missions on Israel’s borders — UNIFIL in Lebanon, UNDOF in Syria — became symbolic rather than operational. They documented violations but avoided confrontation. Only the Sinai multinational force has ever worked, largely because it is not a U.N. construct and is run by capable states with real stakes.
The new Gaza mission, though not formally under Security Council authority, still requires Council legitimacy and political consensus — including from countries that refuse to confront Hamas directly. The amendments adding references to a Palestinian state have already triggered upheaval inside Israel, with far-right ministers denouncing any hint of statehood and Hamas condemning the plan as “international guardianship.” This is not an environment for effective enforcement; it is an environment for paralysis.
A lightly armed contingent tasked with protecting civilians, securing humanitarian corridors and “overseeing” disarmament would quickly become a target — or, worse, a shield behind which Hamas could regroup. Israel would face the familiar dilemma of acting unilaterally and risking peacekeeper casualties or holding back while its enemy rebuilds under international cover.
The moral impulse behind the plan is real. The strategic logic is not. Gaza needs security forces that can actually enforce security. That requires a vetted, Arab-led, internationally backed presence — Egyptian, Jordanian, Emirati — capable of operating where Hamas now functions and gradually replacing it.
A peacekeeping force that cannot confront power cannot transform Gaza. It can only disguise the problem. And Gaza has endured enough illusions already.
The fantasy of a ‘deradicalized’ Gaza
For more than a century, Palestinian society in Gaza has been taught that its national purpose is not to build a homeland for itself but to destroy the Jewish one: Israel. This is not a fringe belief. It is the cultural consensus. The idea is not debated in Gaza; it is the unifying principle of all politics, culture and religion. Every Palestinian classroom, mosque, media outlet and public institution reinforces the same message: Israel must disappear, and killing Jews is the means to that end.
This ideology did not begin with Hamas. The terrorist group merely weaponized what Palestinian culture had already been preaching for generations. From the Palestinian Authority to schools run by the U.N. Relief Works for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), children have been raised to see “liberation” as synonymous with annihilation. The Palestinians’ very identity, the essence of their “national aspiration,” is built around that genocidal goal.
To claim that Gaza can become “deradicalized” without a complete cultural revolution is to mistake a slogan for a strategy.
Deradicalization is not a construction project. It cannot be achieved with Western consultants, foreign funding or a new school curriculum designed in Brussels. You cannot undo five generations of hate with a 10-year rebuilding plan. You cannot reverse generational genocidal ideology in a few months of reconstruction or a few years of “international supervision.”