UN peacekeepers operating in Lebanon with the goal of “restoring state authority and ensuring lasting stability”. Photo: UNIFIL/X
Israel’s repeated violations of its neighbors’ sovereignty without being held accountable by the UN Security Council, confirm once again its guaranteed impunity.
The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said in a press release on Sunday, November 16, that some of its troops were targeted by Israeli artillery shelling earlier that day inside the Lebanese territories.
The peacekeeping mission clarified that its personnel escaped the offensive unharmed, after asking the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to stop the assault through liaison channels.
The UNIFIL considered the incident, which marks the third Israeli attack on its troops in the last three months, a serious violation of the Security Council resolution 1701, which was adopted in 2006 to resolve the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
For its part, the IOF claimed that it misidentified the targeted peacekeepers due to poor visibility caused by weather conditions, after spotting two suspects in southern Lebanon, which entailed firing “warning shots” to disperse them.
However, the repeated assaults by the IOF against the mission for over a year exposes Israel’s systematic targeting of United Nations personnel, not only in Lebanon but also in other parts of the region, particularly Gaza.
Lebanon to file complaint against Israel for building a wall on the southern Lebanese border
Besides its daily airstrikes across Lebanon, and the recurrent attacks on UNIFIL troops, Israel has also committed another violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty by building a concrete wall that crosses the UN-demarcated Blue Line.
In response to the blatant violation, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, issued directives to the concerned government officials to file an urgent complaint against Israel with the UN Security Council.
A UNIFIL report that refutes Israel’s denial of building the wall, and confirms that the wall has made 4,000 square meters of Lebanese land inaccessible to the residents in the affected area, will be enclosed in the complaint.
“Israeli presence and construction in Lebanese territory are violations of Security Council resolution 1701 and of Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The UNIFIL asserted in the report.
It further reiterated its call on the IOF “to respect the Blue Line in its full length and withdraw from all areas north of it.”
On Nov. 14, Nestlé Zimbabwe workers, led by UFAWUZ, staged a peaceful picket demanding living wages and an end to unfair labor practices. The action follows a protracted wage dispute in which Nestlé refused to increase wages.
Members of the United Food and Allied Workers Union of Zimbabwe (UFAWUZ) staged a picket at Nestlé Zimbabwe, demanding an end to unfair labor practices, restoration of decent wages, job security, and respect for workers’ rights.
According to UFAWUZ Secretary General Ady Mutero, the union was compelled to organize the picket after Nestlé, despite being chair of the Employers Association in the Food and Processing Industry, refused to grant any wage increase following a deadlock at the National Employment Council (NEC). Instead of championing fair wage discussions or proceeding to arbitration, Nestlé “obstructed both processes,” Mutero explained. This left workers without a wage agreement for the June–December period, effectively freezing them on poverty-level salaries. Under Section 74(6) of the Labour Act, workers are legally permitted to picket under such circumstances, leading to yesterday’s action.
Unfair labor practices inside the factory
Mutero calls out a series of unfair labor practices that workers have faced inside the factory. These include:
Refusal to award any wage increases, even after formal requests from both the Workers’ Committee and the union.
Violation of Nestlé’s own global Employer Relations Policy, which obligates all subsidiaries to align wages with each country’s Poverty Datum Line (PDL).
Use of labor brokers to hire workers on hourly rates below those agreed at the NEC, undermining sector standards.
Intentional wage suppression, even as senior management receives hefty salaries and corporate perks.
“These actions undermine both workers’ rights and Nestlé’s internationally accepted employment values,” Mutero noted, saying that the company’s local behavior sharply contradicts its global commitments to decent work.
Longstanding grievances, exhausted dialogue
The union’s grievances are not new, they have persisted throughout this year’s wage negotiation cycle, especially after the NEC wage talks collapsed earlier. Before calling for industrial action, UFAWUZ took several steps:
Participated in NEC wage negotiations for the sector.
Formally requested an internal wage adjustment, which the Labour Act allows even when NEC processes are stalled.
Urged Nestlé to respect its own global policy by ensuring wages align with the national PDL.
Pursued social dialogue, calling on Nestlé to lead by example as the sector’s most powerful employer.
“All these good-faith efforts were rejected,” Mutero said. “Industrial action became the last resort.”
Wages far below the poverty datum line
The wage crisis at Nestlé Zimbabwe is severe. The lowest-paid workers currently earn USD 250 per month, while the national PDL for a family of four stands at USD 650. This means Nestlé pays less than 40% of the living wage required, leaving workers USD 400 short every month.
Mutero highlighted the disparity: workers in the detergents sector, performing equivalent grades, earn USD 400, demonstrating that Nestlé is lagging far behind comparable industries despite commanding a strong global brand and significant local market share.
Inflation and the crisis of survival
Zimbabwe’s persistent inflation and soaring cost of living have eroded workers’ purchasing power to the point of survival crisis. At USD 250, workers cannot meet basic expenses, including food, transport, healthcare, or school fees. Families are forced into debt, informal side hustles, and other coping strategies that remain unsustainable.
“For employees of a multinational like Nestlé, the contradiction between corporate profits and workers’ daily struggles is stark and unjustifiable,” Mutero stressed.
A wider fight against exploitation
Mutero placed the workers’ struggle within a much broader African context. According to him, Nestlé’s actions reflect a pattern in which multinational corporations operating in Africa maximize profits while refusing to pay living wages.
“From Zimbabwe to the rest of the continent, neoliberal practices, outsourcing through labor brokers, wage suppression, and ignoring corporate social responsibility, have become entrenched,” he said. UFAWUZ therefore views the Nestlé picket as part of a wider continental resistance against exploitative corporate behavior.
By standing firm, the union hopes to push African governments, employers, and multinational corporations to uphold fair labor standards, respect workers’ rights, and ensure that economic growth benefits the very workers who create the wealth.
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Foreign Minister of the People’s Republic of China, Wang Yi speaks at a UN Security Council meeting on Palestine in New York, United States on September 27, 2024. [Selçuk Acar – Anadolu Agency]
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday that any arrangements regarding the Gaza Strip should reflect Palestinian governance, Anadolu reports.
“Any post-conflict arrangement for Gaza should reflect the fundamental principle of ‘the Palestinians governing Palestine’ and must adhere unwaveringly to the ‘two-state solution’” only through which “lasting peace and stability” can be achieved in the Middle East, Wang told Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit during a meeting in Beijing.
China will keep “upholding justice on the international stage, firmly support the restoration of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and promote advancing and implementation of the ‘two-state solution,’” he said.
Beijing “never interferes in other countries’ internal affairs and never engages in geopolitical rivalry,” as the goal of Chinese-Arab cooperation is “common development, shared prosperity and helping all countries achieve modernization,” said Wang.
China is the Arab countries’ “most reliable partner” and supports them in “overcoming external interference, pursuing development paths suited to their own national conditions, strengthening strategic autonomy,” as well as achieving unity and self-reliance, and jointly safeguarding regional peace and stability.
Aboul-Gheit, while expressing the importance of relations with China, also expressed a willingness for broader prospects for China-Arab League relations.
“The Arab League appreciates China’s commitment to fairness and justice on the Palestinian issue and looks forward to China continuing to play a constructive role,” he said.
Aboul-Gheit is in China for the 11th China-Arab Civilization Dialogue in Beijing, which is attended by 150 representatives from 22 Arab countries and the League of Arab States, according to state-run China Daily.
The UN Security Council adopted a US-drafted resolution Monday establishing a transitional Board of Peace (BoP) and authorizing an International Stabilization Force (ISF) to oversee governance, reconstruction and security efforts in Gaza.
The resolution passed with 13 votes, while Russia and China abstained. It authorizes the ISF and the BoP until Dec. 31, 2027.
Since October 2023, nearly 69,500 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and more than 170,700 wounded in Israel’s war that has reduced much of the enclave to rubble.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
European Union flags are seen waving outside the EU Commission Building in Brussels, Belgium. [Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency]
The European Union on Tuesday welcomed the adoption of the UN Security Council’s resolution endorsing a ceasefire and a 20-point plan for peace in Gaza, describing it as an “important step in advancing a comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict,”Anadolu reports.
Speaking in Brussels, EU spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said the resolution “consolidates the ceasefire, enables large-scale humanitarian access, and paves the way for early recovery, reconstruction, and institutional reform in Gaza after two years of devastating conflict.”
“The EU will continue to engage closely with the UN and regional partners to support implementation in line with international law,” he said.
He stressed that the EU calls on all parties to adhere to the resolution’s provisions and implement the comprehensive plan “without delay,” while also reaffirming support for reviving a political process to achieve lasting peace based on the two-state solution.
“The EU is ready to play its part and contribute to the implementation of the Gaza peace plan, including through the civil-military coordination center,” El Anouni added.
The UN Security Council on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution establishing a transitional Board of Peace (BoP) and authorizing International Stabilization Forces (ISF) to oversee governance, reconstruction, and security efforts in the Gaza Strip.
The resolution passed with 13 votes in favor, while Russia and China abstained. It authorizes the ISF and the Board of Peace until Dec. 31, 2027.
Since October 2023, nearly 69,500 Palestinians have been killed—mostly women and children—and more than 170,700 wounded in Israel’s war that has reduced much of the enclave to rubble.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Palestinians who lost their homes in two years of Israeli attacks continue to live among the rubble of destroyed buildings in northern Gaza’s Jabalia Camp, struggling to meet basic needs and cope with cold weather conditions, on November 16, 2025. [Saeed M. M. T. Jaras – Anadolu Agency]
The recent vote in the UN Security Council on Gaza – with Russia and China pointedly abstaining and the West once again attempting to choreograph the outcome – marked a moment that history may one day identify as a subtle but decisive shift. Not because the resolution itself alters the facts on the ground. It doesn’t. Gaza remains in ruins, Palestinians remain under the boot of an unrestrained occupying power, and Washington still acts as the global custodian of Israeli impunity.
Rather, this vote matters because it revealed something the West has long tried to conceal: that Palestinians no longer accept, and the world no longer believes in, the idea that Gaza is a space to be managed, administered, “stabilised,” or reconstructed by external custodians – feigning benevolence. Not by the United States. Not by Europe. Not by a Trump–Netanyahu blueprint dressed up in humanitarian language. Not even by international institutions that imagine themselves neutral while enabling the status quo.
The era when Great Powers could simply appoint themselves guardians of Palestine, deciding who governs Gaza and how, is culminating. The vote exposed the exhaustion of this imperial pretence. Gaza is not a Protectorate. It is not a failed territory awaiting trusteeship. It is not a strategic sandbox for Western experiments in “post-conflict governance.” Gaza is an occupied land belonging to a people who demand – and are entitled to complete self-rule.
To insist that Palestinians need custodians is not only politically fraudulent. It is legally unsustainable. Gaza is not real estate waiting for a landlord. Gaza is not a geopolitical vacuum into which global powers can insert their “solutions.” Gaza is Palestinian land, and under international law, Palestinians alone have the right to determine its future.
Everything else – the Western reconstruction plans, the “security mechanisms,” the talk of Arab-led stabilisation, the proposal to outsource Gaza to a foreign administration – is, but a thin repackaging of the same old project, to deny Palestinians sovereignty under the guise of responsible management.
The UNSC vote and the myth of neutral guardianship
The West desperately sought a resolution that would legitimise its vision of Gaza’s “day after” – a vision that both Trump and Netanyahu have crudely articulated, namely that Gaza must be contained, fragmented, and directed by powers other than the people who live there. The resolution’s language attempted to smuggle in the idea that Gaza requires a carefully supervised transition, with “acceptable” Palestinian actors vetted by Israel and the United States.
Russia and China abstained not out of indifference but to signal the obvious: this resolution was never about Palestinian self-determination. It was about manufacturing consent for externally designed governance structures. By withholding their support, Moscow and Beijing made clear that the West’s attempt to codify a custodial order over Gaza lacked legitimacy.
But more importantly, Palestinian society itself has rendered such proposals obsolete. Across Gaza, the West Bank, and the diaspora, the message is unmistakable: no more trustees, no more guardians, no more caretakers of the Palestinian will.
International law is unambiguous: Gaza is not yours to govern
Under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the core principles of the UN Charter, the right of a people under occupation is not to be administered by third parties but to exercise national self-determination. Every “transitional authority” imposed by foreign powers – no matter how humanitarian its vocabulary – violates this principle.
Gaza’s status is not ambiguous.
Israel is the occupying power.
The occupation is illegal.
The siege is collective punishment.
And the right to self-government rests solely with Palestinians not with international coalitions claiming to act on their behalf.
The West’s repeated attempts to design the administrative architecture of Gaza are not proposals; they are breaches of law dressed in diplomatic language. Even the insistence that Gaza must be governed by “reformed” Palestinian institutions vetted by Western capitals is a violation of the basic principle of self-determination. The political configuration of Palestinian governance is the exclusive domain of Palestinians. Not Tel Aviv. Not Washington. Not Brussels. And certainly not former colonial powers still struggling to reconcile with the fact that their era is over.
Gaza is not real estate: it is history, identity, and national continuity
The West continues to speak of Gaza as if it were a property problem. A place to be rebuilt, administered, secured, fenced, or leased. A space to be redesigned through “development packages” and “security compacts.” But Gaza is not a zone of crisis management – it is one of the oldest, most continuous communities of the Palestinian people. Gaza is, in poin5t of fact, an ancient historical entity with a continuous history of habitation spanning over 4,000 years, functioning as a vital trade hub and a crossroads of civilizations between Egypt and the Levant.
For the West, real estate thinking comes naturally. Land is property. Property is power. And power belongs to those who can enforce it. It is a capitalist notion of tenure and tenants.
For Palestinians, the paradigm is in stark contrast. Land is memory, belonging, and the right to exist as a people. Gaza contains the living history of displacement: families rooted in villages across what is now Israel, carrying the trauma of the Nakba, holding keys to homes they were violently expelled from. Gaza is not an administrative unit. It is the beating heart of Palestinian nationhood.
This is why every attempt to partition, rehabilitate, internationalise, or reassign Gaza collapses. Because Palestine is not a managerial problem – it is a national question. The West keeps trying to govern land, while Palestinians insist on governing themselves.
Why the West cannot govern Gaza – not even “for its own good”
The West’s failure is not merely moral. It is structural. Its record in the Middle East is a catalogue of disasters rooted in the same patronising assumption: that Arabs and Muslims require guidance, supervision, and discipline from “civilised” powers.
In Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Lebanon, foreign custodianship destroyed far more than it built. But Gaza is an even more glaring case. For decades, Western states funded the siege, shielded Israel from accountability, armed the occupation, and vilified Palestinian political expression. These are not neutral actors. They are co-architects of the catastrophe.
A custodian cannot simultaneously be the enabler of oppression. Western claims to benevolent governance are incompatible with their decades-long support for Israel’s domination of Palestinian life. If the West truly wanted Gaza to be free, safe, and stable, it would stop arming the state that bombs its people, destroys its hospitals, starves its children, and flattens its neighbourhoods. Instead, it offers proposals for “responsible administration” that Palestinians are expected to accept with gratitude.
No occupied people in history have ever accepted such terms – and Palestinians will not be the first.
In the final analysis, Palestinian self-rule is not an aspiration; it is an inevitability. The West, in its sophisticated crudity, continues to behave as though Palestinian sovereignty is a privilege that may be granted once Palestinians mature into acceptable political actors. This worldview is a relic of colonial paternalism. It is the same logic the British used in Mandate Palestine, arguing that Palestinians were not yet capable of governing the land they had inhabited for centuries.
But history keeps asserting itself. Every uprising, every wave of resistance, every assertion of national identity is a reminder that Palestinians do not seek permission to exist as a people. They claim it by right. The UNSC vote may not deliver liberation, but it revealed a deeper truth: the world is no longer convinced by Western narratives of Palestinian incapacity. A growing global consensus recognises that Gaza cannot be governed by external powers because the external powers bear responsibility for the devastation. From trusteeship to liberation: the shift is already underway
The world is changing. Younger generations across continents are rejecting the old colonial storylines. South Africa’s leadership, Latin American states, African blocs, Asian alliances – all increasingly speak in a language the West hoped would disappear: the language of anti-colonial justice.
Gaza is not a humanitarian crisis to be managed. It is a liberation struggle to be recognised. This is why the Trump–Netanyahu vision for Gaza’s future – a patchwork of controlled zones, demilitarised enclaves, and externally appointed governors – is already dead-on arrival. Only those who misunderstand the moment believe that Palestinians will accept such an arrangement.
The vote at the UNSC did not resolve the struggle. But it exposed the limits of Western custodianship and the persistence of Palestinian determination. The imperial toolbox is empty. Whatever may remain of it is valueless and obsolete. The language of trusteeship has lost legitimacy. And Palestinians are making it clear that the future of Gaza will not be negotiated over their heads – it will be shaped by their own hands.
No more guardians. No more intermediaries. No more custodians
The world cannot govern Gaza. The West cannot stabilise Gaza. Israel cannot redesign Gaza. And no international coalition can administer Gaza without becoming part of the machinery that denies Palestinians their sovereignty.
Gaza’s future belongs to Palestinians – not as a concession, but as a right rooted in history, law, and the unbreakable continuity of a people who refuse to be erased. No more custodians. No more trustees. No more guardians.
Palestinians will rule Gaza – because Gaza is Palestine, and Palestine belongs to its people.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
