Gaza aid resolution | U.N. again delays vote; U.S. backs it, others want stronger text

U.N. Security Council delays vote on resolution to deliver aid to Gaza, expected to pass on Dec. 22 with U.S. support. Resolution calls for humanitarian access, conditions for sustainable cessation of hostilities.

The UN Security Council on December 21 again delayed a vote on a watered-down resolution to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza — a revision backed by the United States, while other countries support a stronger text that would include the now eliminated call for the urgent suspension of hostilities between Israel and Hamas.

The revised draft resolution was discussed behind closed doors for over an hour by council members not long after it was circulated. Because there were significant changes, many said they needed to consult their capitals before a vote, which is now expected on December 22.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters after the consultations that the United States backs the new text, and if it is put to a vote the U.S. will support it.

The circulation of the new draft culminated a week and a half of high-level negotiations that at times involved US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Arab and Western counterparts. In a sign of intense US efforts, President Joe Biden said Wednesday that diplomats at the U.N. were engaged in negotiations on “a resolution that we may be able to agree to.” The vote, initially scheduled for Monday, has been delayed every day since then.

Thomas-Greenfield denied that the resolution is watered down, saying, “The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground.” But the key provision with teeth was eliminated — a call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” Instead, it calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said if adopted this would mark the council's first reference to a cessation of hostilities.

On a key sticking point concerning aid deliveries, the new draft eliminates a previous request for the U.N. “to exclusively monitor all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza provided through land, sea and air routes” by outside parties to confirm their humanitarian nature.

It substitutes a request to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint “a senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator with responsibility for facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” whether relief deliveries to Gaza that are not from the parties to the conflict are humanitarian goods. It asks the coordinator to establish a “mechanism” to expedite aid and demands that the parties to the conflict — Israel and Hamas — cooperate with the coordinator.