Ambassadors vote during a meeting about the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, at UN headquarters in New York on December 22, 2023.(Photo by Charly Triballeau / AFP)
United Nations, New York: After many delays, the U.N. Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution on Friday calling for immediately speeding up 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 U.S. veto of a Russian amendment that would have restored the call for a suspension of hostilities. That vote was 10 members in favor, the U.S. against and four abstentions.
The revised text was negotiated during a week and a half of high-level diplomacy by the United States, the United Arab Emirates on behalf of Arab nations and others.
U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said late Thursday the United States, Israel’s closest ally, backed it. The U.S. abstention avoided a second U.S. veto of a Gaza resolution following Hamas’ surprise October 7 attacks inside Israel.
The vote, initially scheduled for Monday, has been delayed every day since then.
Rather than watered down, Thomas-Greenfield described the resolution as "strong” and said it "is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance 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 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 stopping fighting.
