UN Security Council passes Gaza aid resolution as US abstains

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By Editor_1
Members of the United Nations Security Council vote on a proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to the Gaza Strip - via land, sea and air routes - and set up UN monitoring of the humanitarian assistance delivered, during a meeting at the UN headquarters in New York, USA, on Friday (December 22, 2023) -David Dee Delgado/Reuters
By Farnaz Fassihi and Michael Levenson

UNITED NATIONS – The UN Security Council on Friday (22) adopted a resolution calling for a surge in aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip, ending nearly a week of intense diplomatic wrangling intended to ensure that the United States would not block the measure.

The vote was 13-0 in favour of the resolution, with the United States and Russia abstaining. The final version of the resolution did not demand an immediate pause in the fighting, at the insistence of the United States, and so was unlikely to affect the fighting in Gaza, where about 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

The resolution was adopted after council diplomats repeatedly delayed the vote this week and reworked the measure in intense negotiations aimed at winning support from the White House and its allies in the Israeli government.

Security Council resolutions are legally binding on member states, but enforcing them also requires consensus and can be difficult.

“We know this is not a perfect text. We know only a ceasefire will stop the suffering,” said Lana Nusseibeh, the ambassador for the United Arab Emirates who has been leading the negotiations.

The United States had previously vetoed two resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. That put Washington increasingly at odds with other major powers and with the Arab world.

Russia proposed an amendment that would have partially reverted to an earlier version of the resolution, including a pause in the fighting, but the United States vetoed that change.

Friday’s resolution, put forward by the UAE, the only Arab country currently on the 15-member council, called on the warring parties in Gaza to allow the use of “all available routes” into Gaza for aid deliveries, according to a draft that was circulated before the vote. It also demands the immediate release of all hostages abducted during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

One major sticking point in talks had been the question of whether Israel would still inspect all aid shipments, a system UN officials said had made it nearly impossible to scale up the delivery of food, fuel, medicine and other aid.

The final resolution asks the UN secretary-general to appoint a coordinator responsible for “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” that aid cargo entering Gaza is humanitarian in nature, who would be “consulting all relevant parties.”

The approved resolution also dropped a call for the “urgent suspension of hostilities” from an earlier version, instead calling for “urgent steps” to allow unhindered humanitarian access and the creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

The United States had rejected an earlier version of the resolution that put the UN in charge of inspecting aid shipments for weapons and other contraband, arguing that Israel should be involved in the process to make it workable.

Even though she did not vote in favour of the resolution, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the UN, said it “speaks to the severity of the crisis and it calls on all of us to do more.” Thomas-Greenfield did not explain why the US had abstained but said she was deeply disappointed that the resolution did not condemn Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, said the United States’ efforts to change the text to its liking were “cynical and shameful” and “not transparent”.  He said the resolution had been diluted to the point that it gives “Israeli forces the greenlight to commit war crimes”.

The only reason Russia did not veto the resolution, he said, was because it had the backing of Arab states.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he hoped the resolution “makes people understand that a humanitarian ceasefire is indeed something that is needed if we want humanitarian aid to be effective.”

Hunger and disease are spreading rapidly in Gaza as the war has displaced 1.9 million people, pushing most of them into squalid, overcrowded conditions in the south, or forcing them to live outside or to crowd into shelters, UN officials say.

-New York Times

 

 

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