UNITED NATIONS — After many delays, the UN Security Council on Friday adopted a watered-down resolution calling for an immediate acceleration of aid deliveries to desperate civilians in Gaza, but without the original call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.
The vote in the 15-member council was 13-0, with the United States and Russia abstaining. The vote followed a US veto of a Russian amendment that would have reinstated the call for a suspension of hostilities. That vote was 10 members in favor, the US against and four abstentions.
The revised text was negotiated over a week and a half of high-level diplomacy by the United States, the United Arab Emirates on behalf of the Arab countries and others.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said late Thursday that the United States, Israel's closest ally, supports the proposal. The American abstention avoided a second American veto on a Gaza resolution after Hamas' surprise attacks in Israel on October 7.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.
After many delays, the UN Security Council scheduled a vote on Friday on a watered-down resolution to provide much-needed aid to Gaza.
The revised text is backed by the United States, while Russia and other countries continue to support stronger language, including a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.
Council members met behind closed doors on Thursday to discuss a revised draft resolution and then postponed the vote so they could consult their capitals on the key changes aimed at avoiding a US veto. A new text with some minor changes was distributed on Friday morning.
It was unclear whether the resolution would be adopted. A council diplomat said Russia holds the key, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters that the United States supports the new text. She did not say how the U.S. would vote, but an abstention would still allow passage of the resolution if Russia or another permanent member did not use its veto.
The distribution of the new draft marked the culmination of a week and a half of high-level negotiations involving US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Between Tuesday and Thursday, Blinken spoke three times each with the foreign ministers of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, as well as the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Britain, France and Germany.
The vote, originally scheduled for Monday, has been postponed every day since.
Far from being watered down, Thomas-Greenfield described the resolution as “strong” and said it is “fully supported by the Arab group providing them with what they think is needed to get humanitarian aid on the ground.”
But it was stripped of its key provision with teeth – a call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered access for humanitarian assistance, and for urgent steps towards a lasting cessation of hostilities.”
Instead, it calls for “urgent steps to be taken to immediately enable safe and unhindered humanitarian access, as well as to create the conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities.” The steps have not been defined, but diplomats say if adopted it would be the council's first reference to stopping the fighting.
In a key sticking point regarding aid deliveries, the new draft eliminates an earlier request for the UN to “exclusively monitor all humanitarian aid shipments to Gaza delivered via land, sea and air routes” by external parties to ensure their humanitarian character to confirm.
It replaces a request for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to “as soon as possible appoint a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator responsible for facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” that aid deliveries to Gaza that do not come from parties to the conflict are humanitarian goods. It asks the coordinator to quickly set up a “mechanism” to expedite aid deliveries and demands that the parties to the conflict – Israel and Hamas – cooperate with the coordinator.
Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. negotiated the new draft with the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council that sponsored the resolution, as well as Egypt, which borders Gaza, and others. This largely ignored the 13 other council members, some of whom objected to being left out, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the consultations were private.
Guterres has said Gaza is facing “a humanitarian catastrophe” and warned that a total collapse of the humanitarian aid system would lead to “a complete collapse of law and order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt.”
Gaza's entire 2.2 million residents are in food crisis or worse and 576,600 people are at “catastrophic” levels of famine, according to a report released Thursday by 23 UN and humanitarian organizations. With all but a trickle of supplies to Gaza cut off, the UN World Food Program says 90% of the population regularly goes without food for a whole day.
Nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to Gaza's health ministry. During the October 7 attack, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 240 hostages back to Gaza.
Hamas controls the Gaza Strip and the Ministry of Health does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths. Thousands more Palestinians are buried under the rubble of Gaza, the UN estimates.
Security Council resolutions are legally binding, but in practice many parties choose to ignore the Council's requests for action. General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, although they provide an important barometer of global opinion.