The UN Security Council has approved a toned-down bid to boost humanitarian aid to Gaza that stopped short of a call for a ceasefire because of fears the United States and Israel would veto the motion.
The US, which is Israel’s main ally had threatened to veto the Security Council motion during days of wrangling, chose instead to abstain after language was changed on hostilities and monitoring aid.
Washington has regularly backed Israel’s right to defend itself, but has grown increasingly critical over the suffering of Gaza’s 2.3 million people amid a soaring death toll and a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.
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In its latest update on casualties, Gaza’s health ministry said 20,057 Palestinians had been killed and 53,320 wounded in Israeli strikes since the conflict started.
The adopted Security Council resolution “calls for urgent steps to immediately allow safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access and to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.
The initial draft had called for “an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities” to allow aid access.
But the US and Israel oppose a ceasefire, believing it would only benefit Hamas.
Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and free hostages taken by Hamas.
The resolution also no longer diluted Israel’s monitoring of limited aid deliveries via the Rafah crossing from Egypt and the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has vowed to eradicate Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, after the group’s fighters launched a cross-border raid into southern Israel on October 7, killing 1200 people and taking 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
After Friday’s vote, Israel’s ambassador to the UN said the Security Council should have focused more on the hostages.
“The UN’s focus only on aid mechanisms to Gaza is unnecessary and disconnected from reality – Israel is already allowing aid deliveries at the required scale,” Gilad Erdan said.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said his country would “continue the war until all hostages are released and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is destroyed”.
In a statement, Hamas said it viewed the UN resolution on humanitarian aid to be insufficient to meet Gaza’s needs.
Israel faces criticism, while widening offensive
Israel has faced mounting global criticism over the plight of Gazans as it pursues the war.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the way Israel is conducting its military operation is “creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid” inside the enclave.
Earlier, Israel said 5405 aid trucks – carrying food, water and medical supplies – have entered Gaza since the start of the war.
Aid groups say only about 10 per cent of what is needed is coming in. A report by a UN-backed body said on Thursday the risk of famine is growing every day, with four out of five households in parts of the strip going days without food.
Air strikes, artillery bombardments and fighting were reported across Gaza on Friday as hopes faded for an imminent breakthrough in talks this week in Egypt aimed at getting warring Israel and Hamas to agree to a new truce.
Israel’s military ordered residents of Al-Bureij, in central Gaza, to move south immediately, indicating a new focus of the ground assault that has already devastated the north of the enclave and made a series of incursions in the south.
A UN expert warned Israel was seeking to “permanently alter” the composition of Gaza’s population with ever-expanding evacuation orders and widespread, systematic attacks
“Gaza’s housing and civilian infrastructure have been razed to the ground, frustrating any realistic prospects for displaced Gazans to return home, repeating a long history of mass forced displacement of Palestinians by Israel,” Special Rapporteur on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) Paula Gaviria Betancur said.
Israeli forces have previously engaged with Hamas gunmen on the edges of Al-Bureij but have yet to thrust deeper into the built-up area, which grew out of a camp for Palestinian refugees from the 1948 Israeli-Arab war.
In the south, at least four civilians were killed in an air strike on a car in Rafah, a Palestinian rescue worker said.
The Israeli military said in a statement its air force destroyed a long-range missile launch site in Juhor ad-Dik, central Gaza, from which, it said, “recent launches into Israeli territory were carried out” – a possible reference to an attack on Tel Aviv on Thursday.
A group representing families of Gaza hostages said on Friday that one captive – 73-year-old Gadi Haggai, a US-Israeli dual national – had died in captivity. It did not give details or say how the information was obtained.
