Members of the United Nations Security Council called Wednesday for the Gaza ceasefire deal to become permanent and blasted Israeli efforts to expand control in the West Bank as a threat to prospects of a two-state solution, coming on the eve of President Donald Trump’s first Board of Peace gathering to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories.
The high-level U.N. session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board’s meeting for the same day and it became clear that it would complicate travel plans for diplomats planning to attend both. It is a sign of the potential for overlapping and conflicting agendas between the United Nations’ most powerful body and Trump’s new initiative, whose broader ambitions to broker global conflicts have raised concerns in some countries that it may attempt to rival the U.N. Security Council.
Pakistan, the only country on the 15-member council that also accepted an invitation to join the Board of Peace, denounced Israel’s contentious West Bank settlement project during the meeting as “null and void” and said it constitutes a “clear violation of international law.”