Israel-Gaza war live: UN Security Council passes resolution on Gaza aid amid calls for ceasefire

After many delays, the UN Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution calling for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to desperate civilians in Gaza on Friday.

However, the resolution was without the original call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.

The original draft was initially scheduled for Monday but was delayed every day this week to prevent the US from abstaining from the vote.

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.

Rather than watered down, US ambassador Lina 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 “purpose” of the draft resolution introduced by the United Arab Emirates said “is very simple,” ambassador Lana Nusseibeh told the council in New York on Friday.

It “responds with action” to the dire conditions in Gaza while protecting those who are trying to deliver aid,” she said.

The resolution demands “urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access and to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities,” amid dire warnings from international aid groups and pressure from global officials for an end to the siege.

Within 10 weeks, Israel’s air-and-ground assault in Gaza has now killed more than 20,000 people, a figure that amounts to nearly 1 per cent of the population before Israel’s war against Hamas.

Israel launched its devastating retaliatory campaign following Hamas attacks in Israel on 7 October that left 1,200 people dead and took roughly 240 hostages.

Israel’s response has killed roughly one in every 100 people in Gaza. More than two-thirds are women and children.

The United Nations Security Council has voted in favour of boosting humanitarian said to the Gaza Strip and called for urgent steps “to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities” on Friday.

The vote was initially scheduled for Monday but was finally agreed after a week of vote delays and intense negotiations to avoid a veto by the United States.

It comes amid global outrage over a rising Gaza death toll in 11 weeks of war between Israel and Hamas and a worsening humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian enclave.

The US abstained to allow the 15-member council to adopt a resolution drafted by the United Arab Emirates.