The United States has said it is ready to support a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, after a week of negotiations and significant changes including the removal of a request for an “urgent cessation of hostilities”.
A vote on the resolution was postponed to Friday for the fourth straight day after negotiations late into the evening, but U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. and Arab states had submitted an amended version Washington could support.
“We are ready to vote on it. And it is a resolution that will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “It will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we establish a mechanism on the ground to support humanitarian assistance, and we are ready to move forward.”
It was unclear whether other council members, particularly Russia, would accept the changes. It was agreed to postpone the vote until Friday to allow UN missions to consult their capitals.
In a draft of the amended resolution, seen by the Guardian, a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” to allow humanitarian assistance was deleted and replaced with a call for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access.” “, “also replaces the need to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
A section calling on the UN Secretary-General to establish a mechanism “solely responsible” for overseeing aid deliveries has been amended to now call for the appointment of a “senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator”. “is responsible for “facilitating, coordinating and monitoring” and, where appropriate, verifying the humanitarian nature of all humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza.”
This coordinator, to be appointed “expeditiously,” will “establish a UN mechanism to accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza,” consulting “all relevant parties,” primarily Israel.
The draft resolutions “demand that the parties to the conflict cooperate with the Coordinator to fulfill their mandate without delay or hindrance.”
It was unclear what difference the new humanitarian delivery language would make to aid convoys, but Thomas-Greenfield denied that the resolution had been watered down.
“The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group and provides them with what they believe is needed to provide humanitarian assistance on the ground,” she said.
In this week's negotiations, the US had argued that the original language giving the United Nations “exclusive control” of a year-long humanitarian aid mechanism was inflexible and could ultimately hinder the delivery of emergency supplies.
Removing the demand for a cessation of hostilities will ease international pressure on Israel, which has rejected deadlines for completing its offensive. This also applies to the deletion of a paragraph in the original resolution that “strongly condemns all violations of international humanitarian law, including all indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, all violence and hostilities against civilians and all acts of terrorism.”
“The US may have succeeded in turning a very dire situation into an opportunity. They have managed to water down the text enough for Washington to buy it, but Russia in particular will have difficulty digesting it,” said Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group. “The language regarding creating conditions for a cessation of hostilities is incredibly opaque.”
“The language surrounding the coordinator is pure gobbledygook,” Gowan added. “There are still hints of the idea of a UN humanitarian mechanism, but they are so unclear that they give the UN little guidance or influence.”