The recent adoption of the United States–drafted Gaza resolution in the UN Security Council is far more than another procedural episode in the management of a protracted conflict. It marks a decisive moment in the geopolitical contest over the future architecture of the Middle East and the evolving international order. Although endorsed by thirteen members of the Council, the resolution stands on an inherently contradictory foundation: it was approved despite the explicit dissatisfaction of Israel, the open rejection by Hamas, and the notably cautious abstentions of Russia and China. This paradox is not accidental. It reveals a deeper structural struggle one that pits the American model of crisis management and tutelage against the emerging multipolar approaches to sovereignty, legitimacy, and regional autonomy.
The American narrative portrays the resolution as a humanitarian breakthrough, a stabilising mechanism, and a pathway toward reconstruction. Yet its underlying logic is unmistakably political: it internationalises Gaza under an open-ended “stabilisation force,” transfers core administrative functions to external actors, and effectively places the territory under a new form of trusteeship. This trusteeship is neither neutral nor merely transitional. Its design embeds the assumption that security, governance, and reconstruction in Gaza must be orchestrated within a framework ultimately supervised and in practice controlled by the United States and its core Western allies. It is this implicit hierarchy, not the stated humanitarian objectives, that shaped the behaviour of Russia and China during the vote.
Israel’s reaction highlights the first layer of contradiction. Although Tel Aviv protested several aspects of the resolution, it ultimately avoided triggering a direct confrontation with Washington a confrontation that vetoing the text would have entailed. Israel’s unease is rooted in a structural reality: the resolution limits its historically uncontested prerogative to define Gaza’s security architecture. For decades, Israel has engineered the political geography of Gaza with minimal external oversight, relying on the logic of unilateral domination and controlled fragmentation. The establishment of an international force even one whose operational leadership is expected to fall under U.S. military and diplomatic umbrella still introduces a degree of external scrutiny unprecedented since 2005. Israel opposes this, but it cannot afford an explicit rupture with Washington; hence, its carefully calibrated dissent.
For Hamas, the implications are even more far-reaching. The resolution freezes the movement out of governance without offering any legitimate Palestinian-led political alternative. It dissolves the de facto order that has existed since 2007, replacing it with a vaguely defined international administrative structure whose mandate lacks both a clear roadmap and a timeline for withdrawal. In effect, Hamas is removed from the political field not through negotiation or internal Palestinian consensus, but through external engineering. This is not a recipe for stability; it is the prelude to a vacuum that will either be filled by new forms of resistance or contested structures of authority. The absence of a political horizon is not a neutral oversight it is a structural feature of the resolution.
It is precisely this structural condition that guided the abstentions of Russia and China. Their decisions were not expressions of passivity, indifference, or ambivalence. On the contrary, they represent a strategic stance based on several converging considerations.
First, both Moscow and Beijing recognised that the resolution institutionalises a framework in which the United States assumes the role of managing authority over Gaza’s political and security trajectory. For Russia, this model is reminiscent of previous Western-led interventions in Kosovo, Libya, and elsewhere interventions that ultimately consolidated U.S. strategic influence under the guise of humanitarianism or stabilisation. Moscow’s abstention is therefore a refusal to legitimise this pattern. A veto would have allowed Washington to frame Russia as the actor blocking “stability” in a highly sensitive Arab context. A vote in favour would have conferred symbolic support to a project that undermines the very principles of sovereignty, multipolarity, and regional autonomy that Russia has championed in recent years. Abstention allowed Moscow to signal its rejection of U.S. leadership while placing the burden of the resolution’s outcome squarely on Washington.
China’s reasoning, while parallel, is shaped by its own long-term strategy. Beijing has invested heavily in cultivating its image in the Middle East as a non-imperial actor one committed to dialogue, economic partnership, and non-interference. The success of the Iranian–Saudi rapprochement brokered by Beijing strengthened this perception. Supporting the American resolution would have contradicted China’s attempt to present itself as a distinct civilisational player that rejects the securitised, militarised, and coercive modalities characteristic of U.S. crisis management. At the same time, a Chinese veto would have signalled a direct challenge to American regional authority—something Beijing currently avoids as it attempts to manage multiple strategic theatres simultaneously. Abstention, therefore, preserved China’s position as a potential mediator while refusing to endorse a model that entrenches American managerial control.
For both Russia and China, abstention was a carefully calibrated message: they do not recognise the legitimacy of a Gaza administration designed and directed by Washington. They reject the assumption—embedded in the resolution that the West is the natural custodian of Middle Eastern crises. Their abstention underscores the principle that stabilisation without sovereignty is a political fiction and that any attempt to resolve the Palestinian question through externally imposed structures is unsustainable.
What makes this particularly significant is that Russia and China did not deploy their veto power—not because they agree with the resolution, but because they refused to be drawn into a situation where opposition could be weaponised against them in the Arab world. The United States needs the appearance of international consensus; Moscow and Beijing ensured that the responsibility for the resolution’s implementation remains entirely with Washington. The abstentions thus represent a form of strategic non-participation: a refusal to share ownership of a project they believe is flawed, ill-conceived, and politically self-serving.
This entire episode should be understood within a broader civilisational shift. The Gaza resolution embodies the logic of the unipolar moment the belief that crises are to be internationalised under Western management, insulated from regional political dynamics, and administered through technocratic structures disconnected from indigenous legitimacy. Russia and China, through their abstentions, signalled that this logic no longer commands uncontested global acceptance. The world is transitioning toward a model in which no actor—least of all the United States—can unilaterally define the institutional architecture of conflict zones.
The deeper geopolitical truth is this: Gaza has become a symbolic terrain where competing visions of world order intersect. For the United States, the resolution is an attempt to retain relevance and directorship in a region where its influence has been steadily eroding. For Russia and China, abstention is a declaration that they will not endorse a model of crisis governance that perpetuates American primacy. And for regional actors, the resolution is another reminder that international mechanisms—when detached from the political aspirations of the affected population—cannot produce stability, let alone justice.
The UN vote does not resolve the Palestinian question. It does not offer a path toward sovereignty, representation, or reconciliation. It freezes the crisis, externalises governance, and embeds the American security footprint in one of the most politically charged territories on earth. Russia and China understood this clearly, and their abstentions were a strategic articulation of an emerging reality: the era of American-led crisis trusteeship is nearing its end, and the contours of a truly multipolar order are beginning to emerge even in the heart of Gaza.
Comments