The US gives the green light to a draft resolution to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza
After intense negotiations that lasted nearly a week, the US has reportedly agreed to a draft Security Council resolution to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza. The vote, which has been postponed repeatedly since Monday, is not expected until this Friday at the earliest. The proposal put forward by the United Arab Emirates was amended several times to overcome Washington's hypothetical veto of its original wording, which called for a cessation or suspension of hostilities to increase the flow of aid. The core of the Emirati initiative was to establish or set up a UN control mechanism for all aid shipments entering the Gaza Strip, a task that had previously been in the hands of Israel, to exclude the importation of weapons or contraband by trucks. The United States, as Israel's spokesman on the Council, refused to approve this measure, believing it made it more difficult to provide aid.
Against-the-clock talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Emirati and Egyptian counterparts appear to have resolved existing differences over the wording of the draft. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Ambassador to the United Nations, made this clear after a closed session of the Council this afternoon. The US has been working “hard and diligently throughout the last week” with Egypt and the Emirates to ensure the implementation of a “mechanism to support the humanitarian assistance” that Gaza urgently needs. “We are ready to vote on it,” the diplomat said this evening.
The sign of the American vote – yes or abstention – is not clear, although it is fundamentally impossible that it is the veto that was looming in the text this week. “I’m not going to tell you how I’m going to vote,” Thomas-Greenfield said, adding that the United States “can support it if the resolution were presented as it is written now.”
The final version of the text, distributed after the US ambassador's statements, deletes the call for a cessation of hostilities contained in previous versions and instead calls for “urgent measures” to allow unhindered access for humanitarian assistance. It also asks the Secretary-General, António Guterres, to appoint a coordinator in charge of “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring and verifying” whether aid deliveries are of a humanitarian nature.
Several Council member countries, including Russia and France – both of which, like the United States, have veto power – were unhappy with the latest corrections to the text, while diplomatic sources question how to ensure the entry of aid into Gaza as the fighting does not stop on. The concept of “cessation or suspension of hostilities” is a red line for the United States and Israel as it would only benefit Hamas.