Unboxing the UN Plan for a Palestinian State: What the New York Declaration Actually Says
This piece explains what the New York Declaration says, drawn directly from its text. It does not address whether the plan can work, whether its terms are fair to either side, or offer any other commentary — that’s for a separate piece.
The New York Declaration is a 42-paragraph political declaration produced at a UN conference in New York, July 28–30, 2025, and endorsed by the UN General Assembly on September 12, 2025, by a vote of 142 in favor to 10 against, with 12 abstentions. Neither Israel nor Hamas is a signatory or party to it. The US is credited in paragraph 8 for its mediating role in the Gaza ceasefire specifically, alongside Egypt and Qatar, but did not sign the Declaration itself and voted against the resolution endorsing it.
Structure: a list of requirements, not a sequenced plan
Structurally, the Declaration presents most of its provisions as parallel requirements rather than sequential steps. Across the 42 paragraphs, there is exactly one explicit sequencing statement: paragraph 13 states that a transitional administrative committee “must be immediately established” in Gaza, under the Palestinian Authority, following the ceasefire.
Everything else — hostage release, prisoner exchange, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas’s disarmament, deployment of an international stabilization force, elections, a settlement freeze — is stated as a requirement of ending the war or reaching a two-state solution, without a specific trigger or order relative to the others. Notably, the document never states whether Israeli withdrawal must precede Hamas’s disarmament, or the reverse; both appear as parallel requirements “in the context of ending the war,” with no conditional language connecting them in either direction. The 17-page annex to the Declaration (A/CONF.243/2025/1/Add.1), which contains more detailed working-group proposals, repeats the same disarmament and governance language without adding a sequencing clause either.
Press reporting on timelines
Coverage of the Declaration has widely described it as setting a “15-month” timeline for establishing a Palestinian state. That figure does not appear in the 42-paragraph text. It originated in press characterizations of the conference’s overall ambition, published around the July 28–30, 2025 conference dates, and has been repeated since as though it were a stated term of the document itself.
The only specific duration that does appear in the text is the reference to elections being held “within one year” (paragraph 22).
Readers encountering the “15 months” figure elsewhere should be aware it is a media gloss on the document’s ambition, not a clause that can be located and cited within it.
The Resolution In Brief
An immediate Gaza ceasefire — hostage release, a prisoner exchange, and full Israeli withdrawal — followed by a transitional Palestinian Authority (PA) administration and an internationally mandated stabilization force
Unifying Gaza and the West Bank under a single PA government with sole security authority (”One State, One Government, One Law, One Gun”), requiring Hamas to disarm through an internationally supervised process
A two-state solution on the 1967 lines, including Jerusalem, conditioned on PA reforms and elections within a year, with Israel called on to halt settlement expansion and annexation
Reconstruction funding, Palestinian tax revenue and banking access, preservation of the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites, and a broader regional peace track tying Israeli-Palestinian resolution to Syria-Israel and Lebanon-Israel normalization
It is a General Assembly declaration, not a binding Security Council resolution or treaty, and neither Israel nor Hamas is a party to it. Beyond one clause sequencing the transitional committee after the ceasefire, the document lists its requirements — including Israeli withdrawal and Hamas’s disarmament — as parallel conditions without specifying which comes first.
Optional deep dive into more details
If you want the full detail behind each of these points and have the time, read on.
To be honest, at this time many fundamental things will need to be resolved before the deep dive will have much meaning, so I’d skip it unless you are really curious.
Ending the war in Gaza
The Declaration calls for an immediate ceasefire covering all phases of the existing agreement: release of all hostages (living and remains), an exchange of Palestinian prisoners, and full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. It supports the efforts of Egypt, Qatar, and the United States in bringing about that ceasefire.
It demands immediate, unhindered humanitarian aid delivery through all crossings, coordinated with the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross, including the lifting of Israeli restrictions on border crossings, power, fuel, medical supplies, food, and water. It states that using starvation as a method of warfare is prohibited under international law and calls for urgent action to prevent famine in Gaza.
It supports the Arab-OIC reconstruction plan for Gaza and calls for a reconstruction conference in Cairo and an international Trust Fund to finance recovery, while stating that Palestinians must remain in their land — a rejection of proposals to relocate Gaza’s population elsewhere.
Governance after the war
The Declaration states that governance, law enforcement, and security across all Palestinian territory — Gaza and the West Bank together — must belong solely to the Palestinian Authority (PA), with international support. It explicitly endorses the PA’s “One State, One Government, One Law, One Gun” policy, meaning a single Palestinian security structure rather than the current arrangement, in which the PA administers the West Bank and Hamas has governed Gaza since 2007, when Hamas took control of the territory from the PA in armed clashes following a split between the two factions.
As part of this, the document states that Hamas must end its rule in Gaza and hand over its weapons to the PA, supported by international engagement. It calls for this to happen through a disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) process, agreed with international partners and completed within a set timeframe. The document does not specify what that timeframe is.
A transitional administrative committee is to be established in Gaza under the PA immediately following the ceasefire — the one explicit sequencing statement noted above. UNRWA’s role continues in the interim; once a resolution to the Palestinian refugee question is reached under UN General Assembly Resolution 194, UNRWA is to transfer its public services to Palestinian institutions.
International stabilization force
The Declaration supports deploying a temporary international stabilization mission, invited by the PA, operating under UN auspices and mandated by the UN Security Council. This mission would protect Gaza’s civilian population, support the transfer of internal security to the PA, help build the capacity of Palestinian security forces, and monitor compliance with the ceasefire and any future peace agreement. International partners are to fund, train, equip, and advise Palestinian security forces, building on the experience of prior missions such as USSC, EUPOLCOPPS, and EUBAM Rafah.
The document also calls for programs addressing radicalization, incitement, and hate speech “in Israel and Palestine” — one of the few provisions applied to both parties equally — including modernizing the Palestinian school curriculum and calling on Israel to do the same, with an international mechanism to monitor both sides’ compliance.
Terms of Palestinian statehood
The Declaration reaffirms support for a two-state solution: two sovereign, democratic states, Israel and Palestine, existing side by side in peace and security within secure and recognized borders based on the 1967 lines — a formulation that explicitly extends to Jerusalem as well. Gaza is described as an integral part of the Palestinian state and must be unified with the West Bank.
It notes and welcomes commitments made by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a June 9, 2025 letter, including a rejection of violence and terrorism, and a statement that the Palestinian state would provide its own security while not being militarized. The Declaration calls for the PA to continue implementing reforms — covering governance, transparency, fiscal sustainability, countering incitement, and the business environment — with international support, particularly from the EU and the Arab League. It also references Abbas’s commitment to hold general and presidential elections throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, within one year, under international auspices.
The document calls on Israel to publicly commit to the two-state solution, end violence and incitement against Palestinians, halt settlement activity, land seizures, and annexation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem, and take legislative steps against violent settlers, including implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 904.
It calls for admission of the State of Palestine as a full UN member as an “indispensable element” of a political resolution, while noting that recognition of statehood remains a decision for each individual country to make on its own.
Jerusalem and holy sites
The Declaration calls for preserving the existing legal and historical status quo at Jerusalem’s Islamic and Christian holy sites, and affirms the role of the Hashemite Custodianship — Jordan’s historic role overseeing Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem — along with the Jordan-run Jerusalem Awqaf and Aqsa Affairs Department.
Economic provisions
The Declaration commits to Palestinian economic development, removing movement and access restrictions, and the release of Palestinian tax revenues currently withheld by Israel. It calls for revising the 1994 Paris Protocol on Economic Relations — the agreement under which Israel currently collects customs and tax revenue on the PA’s behalf and transfers it to the PA — creating a new framework for transferring clearance revenue toward Palestinian ownership of taxation, and fully integrating Palestine into the international financial system, including sustainable banking relationships.
Measures against unilateral actions
The Declaration commits signatories to protecting the peace process against “spoilers” who might use illegal unilateral measures or violence to derail it. It opposes illegal actions by either side that undermine the viability of a two-state solution, citing settlement activity specifically, in reference to relevant UN resolutions and the July 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion. It commits to adopting restrictive measures against violent extremist settlers and those supporting illegal settlements, and targeted measures against any individuals or entities using violence or terrorism to obstruct a peaceful settlement.
Regional integration
The Declaration frames ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a prerequisite for wider regional peace. It supports renewed efforts on separate Syria-Israel and Lebanon-Israel peace tracks, alongside the Palestinian one. It references a future “Peace Day,” building on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and a proposed “European Peace Supporting Package,” intended to produce economic dividends in trade, infrastructure, and energy across the region. It also proposes exploring a future regional security architecture, citing ASEAN and the OSCE as possible models, and a framework to address the Palestinian refugee question while reiterating the right of return referenced in UN Resolution 194.
Follow-up mechanism
The Declaration designates the conference’s co-chairs — France, Saudi Arabia, and the seventeen working-group co-chairs — as the body responsible for following up on these commitments, including through what it calls a “Global Alliance” for implementing the two-state solution. The text commits to mobilizing further political support around these commitments at leader level, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s 80th session in September 2025.
Background: the underlying documents
The Declaration text itself is UN document A/CONF.243/2025/1. Its 17-page annex, containing more detailed proposals from the eight working groups referenced in paragraph 42, has its own symbol: A/CONF.243/2025/1/Add.1. The General Assembly resolution endorsing both is A/80/L.1, adopted as decision A/DEC/80/506. All are publicly available through the UN Digital Library and UNISPAL, the UN’s Information System on the Question of Palestine.