The Middle East, including the Palestinian Question: Quarterly Open Debate
Tomorrow (28 April), the Security Council will hold its quarterly open debate on “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question”. Bahrain—the Council’s president in April—is convening the meeting as a high-level signature event, which its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, is expected to chair. A briefing is anticipated from Assistant Secretary-General for the Middle East, Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations (DPPA-DPO) Mohamed Khaled Khiari. Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide is also expected to brief in his capacity as Chair of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), which is a 15-member international committee established in 1993 following the Oslo I Accord to coordinate the delivery of international aid to Palestinians and to facilitate dialogue on economic, political, and security issues. Additionally, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to brief in his capacity as a member of the Executive Board of the Board of Peace (BoP), which the Council endorsed through resolution 2803 of 17 November 2025 as a “transitional governance administration” in Gaza.
International efforts to advance the US-proposed peace framework known as the “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict” amid the current Middle East crisis will be a major focus of tomorrow’s meeting. The first phase of the Comprehensive Plan established the current ceasefire in Gaza, while the second phase—which began in January—entailed the formation of an interim technocratic government known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), comprising Palestinian experts under the oversight of the BoP, which is chaired by US President Donald Trump. According to the plan, the BoP is to eventually cede control of Gaza to a reformed Palestinian Authority (PA), at which point it says that “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
The ceasefire remains fragile and has been interrupted by periodic airstrikes, shelling, and gunfire. According to the latest update from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), dated 23 April and citing figures from local health authorities, 786 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire went into effect in October 2025. In one incident on 17 April, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed two UNICEF contractors at the Mansoura drinking water filling station in northern Gaza, forcing UNICEF to close the station at that location until security conditions improve. Tomorrow, some Council members may condemn the incident and call for a credible and impartial investigation into the matter. In this regard, some may stress the need to uphold resolution 2730 of 24 May 2024 on the protection of humanitarian and UN personnel, the implementation of which the Council last discussed on 8 April. (For background and more information, see the brief on protection of humanitarian and UN personnel in our April 2026 Monthly Forecast.)
As part of the second phase of the Comprehensive Plan, resolution 2803 authorised the BoP to deploy an International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to Gaza to oversee Hamas’ disarmament. Although the ISF has yet to deploy, BoP High Representative to Gaza Nickolay Mladenov said in his 24 March briefing to the Security Council that he, along with representatives of Egypt, Qatar, and Türkiye—which have been mediating the peace talks—had presented Hamas with a formal proposal for decommissioning its weapons. According to subsequent media reports, Hamas rejected that plan but has engaged in discussions on a revised proposal presented by the mediators. At tomorrow’s meeting, Blair may provide an update on these discussions and the broader implementation of the transitional framework, potentially previewing the BoP’s first biannual written report to the Council, which is due on 15 May in accordance with resolution 2803.
On 20 April, the UN and the European Union (EU) released the final Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment for Gaza, jointly concluded with the World Bank. The assessment estimated total recovery and reconstruction needs at $71.4 billion over the next decade, including $26.3 billion required in the first 18 months of recovery efforts. It found that over 371,000 housing units in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged, more than 50 percent of hospitals are non-functional, nearly all schools are destroyed or damaged, and the territory’s economy has contracted by 84 percent. Around 1.9 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, and more than 60 percent of the population has lost their homes. Overall, the report estimated that human development in Gaza has been set back by 77 years.
Meanwhile, the situation has also continued to deteriorate in the West Bank, where settlement expansion, settler violence, and Israeli military operations have intensified. According to a 27 March update from OCHA, the number of Palestinians displaced in the context of settler violence and access restrictions had reached 1,697, surpassing the number documented during the whole of 2025. These developments have occurred alongside a series of recent Israeli government measures intended to accelerate settlement activity in the West Bank, deepening Israeli administrative control over parts of the territory and facilitating the expropriation of Palestinian land. (For more information, see our 17 February What’s in Blue story.) On 25 April, the PA held local elections in the West Bank, as well as the Gazan city of Deir al-Balah, which has not been as severely damaged as the rest of the enclave.
Tomorrow, Barth Eide may welcome the elections and provide an update on recent international initiatives to address governance challenges in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These initiatives include the ninth meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, co-chaired by Norway, Saudi Arabia, and the EU, and the most recent biannual AHLC meeting, co-chaired by Norway and the EU, both of which were held in Brussels on 20 April. At these meetings, participants stressed the importance of continued donor support; coordinated international action; the disarmament of Hamas; Palestinian reform measures; and further implementation of and alignment between resolution 2803, the Comprehensive Plan, and the New York Declaration on the two-state solution, which the General Assembly endorsed in September 2025. Several speakers are expected to echo these messages tomorrow.
Speakers are also likely to situate developments in the OPT within the broader regional context. Tomorrow’s meeting will take place exactly two months after the outbreak of the ongoing Middle East crisis, which was triggered by joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on 28 February and Iran’s subsequent retaliation across the region. On 7 April, the US and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire, during which they attempted to negotiate a permanent end to the war. After those talks failed to achieve a breakthrough, Trump announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire on 21 April to allow more time for negotiations. Although an Iranian official stated that the announcement “means nothing” as long as the US maintained its blockade of Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz—the critical waterway that Iran had effectively closed in response to the initial US-Israeli strikes—active hostilities between the parties have not resumed. Negotiations on a permanent settlement still appear gridlocked, however, as the two sides have been unable to agree on terms for resuming talks and have rejected additional consultations in Pakistan, which mediated the initial ceasefire.
On 23 April, Trump also announced a three-week extension of the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel. The countries had initially agreed to a ten-day ceasefire on 16 April, reducing hostilities that had resumed between Israel and Hezbollah in the wake of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, when Hezbollah launched rockets into Israeli territory. Israel then retaliated with intense airstrikes across Lebanon as well as a major incursion into the country’s southern territory. At the time the initial ceasefire went into effect, nearly 2,300 people had reportedly been killed in Lebanon and 13 in Israel.
At tomorrow’s meeting, speakers are likely to welcome both ceasefires, call on all parties to uphold their obligations under the agreements, and urge them to continue diplomatic efforts to achieve a permanent end to the hostilities. Many are likely to call for the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, stressing the principle of freedom of navigation in international waterways and expressing concern about the global economic and humanitarian consequences of the Strait’s continued closure. In this regard, some members may call on Iran to abide by resolution 2817 of 11 March, which, among other provisions, demanded that the country refrain immediately from any actions or threats interfering with international navigation through the Strait of Hormuz. Others may welcome ongoing engagement by the UN to establish a mechanism to ensure the flow of fertilisers and related raw materials in order to ease the humanitarian impact of the Strait’s closure. France and the UK may reference their “Strait of Hormuz maritime navigation initiative”, which they jointly launched on 17 April. Several of these points were raised at today’s (27 April) high-level open debate on maritime security, which Bahrain convened as another signature event of its April Council presidency. (For more information, see our 24 April What’s in Blue story.)