Read the room—Antony Blinken is too optimistic on Gaza ceasefire

On June 10, the United Nations Security Council managed to do something it hadn’t been able to do over the last eight months: pass a resolution demanding a comprehensive ceasefire that would end the war in Gaza. Previous attempts to jam a ceasefire resolution through the chamber were stymied by the United States, which claimed that any action by the U.N. would complicate its own diplomatic initiative with Qatar and Egypt to bring the war to a close and release the remaining hostages.

In the end, the Security Council chose to piggyback off President Joe Biden’s three-stage ceasefire proposal. The first stage envisions “an immediate, full, and complete ceasefire” for six weeks, the release of hostages, a massive increase in humanitarian aid into Gaza, an Israeli military pullback from populated areas of the enclave, and the return of displaced Palestinians to their homes. The ceasefire would stay in effect as long as Israel and Hamas continued negotiating on an agreement for phase two, which includes a permanent end to the war. The last stage would begin the long, expensive process of reconstructing Gaza after it was essentially razed to the ground.

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