Gaza Resolution Passes With US Abstention

UN resolution doesn't call for ceasefire but calls to speed up aid
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 22, 2023 11:55 AM CST
UN Greenlights 'Watered-Down' Resolution on Gaza
Representatives of member countries take a vote during the Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday.   (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

After many delays, the UN Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution Friday calling for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to desperate civilians in Gaza, but without the original call for an "urgent suspension of hostilities" between Israel and Hamas. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-0, with the United States and Russia abstaining, per the AP. The vote followed a US veto of a Russian amendment that would have restored the call for a suspension of hostilities. That vote was 10 members in favor, the US against, and four abstentions. 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.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said late Thursday that the United States, Israel's closest ally, backed it. The US abstention avoided a second US veto of a Gaza resolution following Hamas' surprise Oct. 7 attacks inside Israel. The vote comes after days of high-level negotiations involving US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Between Tuesday and Thursday, Blinken spoke to the foreign ministers of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates three times each, as well as to the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Britain, France, and Germany. The vote, initially scheduled for Monday, had been delayed every day since then.

Rather than watered down, 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." Those steps aren't defined, but diplomats had said that if the resolution were adopted, it would mark the council's first reference to stopping fighting.

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According to a report released Thursday by 23 UN and humanitarian agencies, Gaza's entire 2.2 million population is in a food crisis or worse, and 576,600 are at the "catastrophic" starvation level. With supplies to Gaza cut off except for a small trickle, the UN World Food Program has said 90% of the population is regularly going without food for a full day. Nearly 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war started, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. During the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 240 hostages back to Gaza. Security Council resolutions are legally binding, but in practice, many parties choose to ignore the council's requests for action. General Assembly resolutions aren't legally binding, though they're a significant barometer of world opinion. More here.

(More Israel-Hamas war stories.)

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