Why Gaza peace plan may collapse |
On 18 November 2025, China and Russia abstained from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (2025), which endorsed a peace plan proposed by the United States President Donald Trump. One can understand that both the great powers and the permanent members of the UN Security Council wanted to give peace a chance and thus did not outrightly veto the resolution. Yet, given the progress of phase one of the peace plan, it is evident that the apprehensions of Russia and China about the success of this peace plan may not be unfounded.
I would like to address two questions here. One: What are the likely apprehensions of both Russia and China about this President Trump-sponsored Gaza Peace Plan, and two: based on the concerns shown by both China and Russia, why there are likely chances that this peace plan may collapse before the start of phase three.
I consider Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the peace plan as a "taming phase" that focuses on creating conditional requirements of security, humanitarian relief and matters of governance. There is no timeline attached to this phase, and all this phase does is to tame the people in Gaza by promising them immediate relief in exchange for a political solution that may or may not materialise. The very idea of postponing the real questions of sovereignty to phase 3 is a smart move that positions concrete political solutions to a later phase.
This is a strategy of "taming" the people first and empowering them later, and has all the ingredients that are being projected as trust building, but in fact are already undermining the........