The U.N. Security Council will hold a high-level session Wednesday to address the Gaza cease-fire agreement and Israel’s unlawful moves to expand its control in the West Bank, ahead of a Washington meeting where global leaders are set to discuss the future of the Palestinian territories under President Donald Trump’s newly formed Board of Peace.
The U.N. session in New York was originally scheduled for Thursday but was moved up after Trump announced the board's meeting for that same date 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.
Asked what he hopes to see from the back-to-back meetings this week, Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters: "We expect from the international community to stop Israel and end their illegal effort against annexation, whether in Washington or in New York.”
The foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Indonesia, among others, are expected to attend the monthly Mideast meeting of the 15-member council after many Arab and Muslim countries requested last week that it discuss Gaza and Israel's illegal West Bank settlement project before some of them head to Washington.
