The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a pause in hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the delivery of aid to the Gaza Strip after several failed attempts to agree on the wording of the resolution, while Israel has ordered the evacuation of part of the Gaza Strip. the south of the besieged enclave.
Security Council members remain engaged in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another U.S. veto of a new U.N. resolution on delivering desperately needed aid to Gaza, where Palestinian authorities have said the death toll from Israel’s war against Hamas has exceeded 20,000. people.
The vote, delayed three times, is now expected on Thursday, said Ecuador’s ambassador to the UN, José Javier De la Gasca Lopez-Dominguez, current president of the UN Security Council.
Failure to adopt a Security Council resolution would mean the application of “dangerous double standards,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi warned on Thursday.
Safadi said the draft text focuses on accelerating aid shipments to Gaza, which the kingdom believes Israel is obstructing to prevent the delivery of sufficient life-saving aid.
“In the last three days alone, there have been seven different delays or postponements in this UN Security Council vote on humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Tel Aviv Tribune’s Gabriel Elizondo said in a report Wednesday from the UN headquarters in New York.
“The main sticking point, in our opinion, lies in the wording of the draft regarding the implementation of a monitoring mechanism. Essentially, it would be the UN taking the lead in overseeing and facilitating the entry of aid into Gaza and then its distribution to the people who need it most,” he said.
Currently, Israel inspects all aid entering the Gaza Strip and decides what it lets through, but the new draft calls for the creation of a mechanism for exclusive UN monitoring of aid deliveries.
“Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and is applicable on the ground,” said Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, UN ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, who sponsored the resolution, after the council agreed a new postponement on Wednesday.
The United States also struggled to change the text’s references to a “cessation” of hostilities in the Israeli war.
Nusseibeh expressed hope that a resolution calling for a “suspension” of hostilities in Gaza would eventually be adopted in the UN Security Council.
“I’m optimistic, and if this fails, we’ll keep trying because we have to keep trying,” she told reporters. “There is too much pain on the ground for the Council to continue to fail on this…we have a resolution and we must build on that.” »
The UN Security Council vote was initially postponed until Monday, then pushed back to Tuesday, then Wednesday.
The draft text presented Monday called for an “urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities,” but this wording was watered down to appease the United States.
The latest version seen on Wednesday calls for “an urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and urgent steps towards a lasting cessation of hostilities”.
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also reportedly raised two other issues on Wednesday that are not included in the text: the condemnation of Hamas’s incursion into Israel on October 7 and Israel’s right to self-defense.
On December 8, Washington vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The 193-member UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a similar, although non-binding, resolution on December 12.
Evacuations in Khan Younis
As diplomats grappled with the resolution, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) said the Israeli military on Wednesday ordered the immediate evacuation of an area covering about 20 percent of the central and southern city of Khan Younis.
“A large number of people are going to be affected by this order and will end up being displaced,” said Tel Aviv Tribune’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Khan Younis.
Before the Israeli offensive, the area was home to more than 111,000 people and now includes 32 shelters housing more than 141,000 people displaced from northern Gaza by the war. Israel had initially asked civilians to leave northern Gaza for “safer” areas in the south.
Palestinian officials said Wednesday that at least 20,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, including at least 8,000 children and 6,200 women.
