War between Israel and Hamas: Israel sends more troops to South Gaza
For the second day in a row, the United Nations Security Council postponed a vote on a resolution calling on Israel and Hamas to provide greater access to more humanitarian aid, pausing the fight to make that happen while diplomats meet with the United States struggled. about what it might let through.
The announcement The delay on Tuesday followed hours of intensive negotiations behind closed doors and a Security Council meeting in which diplomats discussed the war in Gaza. It also followed days of negotiations since Friday, when the United Arab Emirates, which introduced the resolution, distributed the text to members.
The draft resolution called for a suspension of fighting long enough to allow the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza by land, air and sea and the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas. It also called for the establishment of a United Nations monitoring system to monitor aid deliveries.
The proposed UN oversight of aid has proven to be the biggest obstacle for the United States, and the decision has now been referred to the White House, leading to multiple delays on Tuesday, several Security Council diplomats said. provided they are not named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The diplomats said Israel is pressuring the United States not to accept putting the UN in charge of inspecting aid deliveries to Gaza because that would effectively leave Israel without a role in screening them. The United States could veto the resolution if a concession on the issue is not reached before Wednesday’s vote, according to Security Council diplomats.
Currently, the hundred or so trucks that enter Gaza every day travel from Egypt to Israel for inspection, then return to Egypt and wind their way to the border at Rafah – a process that many diplomats and UN officials said was unsustainable and slowed down deliveries . of much-needed help.
A senior US official said Washington was still considering the text of the resolution late Tuesday night as negotiations continued. The official confirmed that the UN inspections were among the points of contention.
Other changes sought by the United States include wording on the fighting – changing “cessation” of hostilities to “pauses,” for example. US diplomats have opposed any language implying that Israel should end the war, saying it could allow Hamas to regroup.
“We continue to negotiate seriously and have long called for a massive scale-up of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, as our actions on the ground have demonstrated,” said Nate Evans, the spokesman for the US mission to the UN. that US diplomacy had helped open the Kerem Shalom crossing for aid deliveries from Israel since Sunday.
Much of the discussion around the resolution has focused on the need for the council to act as dire conditions worsen for more than two million Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Tor Wennesland, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the council on Tuesday that there was a “human catastrophe on the ground”.
The United States has been the only member of the Security Council to block demands for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, vetoing two such resolutions. At last week’s General Assembly, when an overwhelming majority of 153 countries voted in favor of a ceasefire, the United States was among the ten countries that vote against the measure.
Pressure has been building on the Biden administration, internationally and domestically, to do more to help Palestinian civilians and help end the war. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Tuesday found that 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Biden administration’s handling of the war.
Negotiations before the final vote were aimed at finding a middle ground that would have a meaningful impact in Gaza, diplomats said.
During the day a visit last week At the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the heads of UN humanitarian agencies and local aid agencies in both places told council members that easing the suffering of Gazans would be impossible without significantly more aid, opening more routes to the enclave and stopping the flow of refugees. the fighting.
The United Arab Emirates, the council’s only Arab member, put forward the resolution after the text was changed during negotiations. In addition to calling for a UN aid monitoring system, the resolution also says commercial goods should be allowed into Gaza, on the grounds that humanitarian aid alone will be insufficient after two months of heavy fighting, which has destroyed much of wiped out the enclave’s infrastructure.
As many as 200 trucks carrying aid enter Gaza every day from the Rafah crossing, on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. On Sunday, Israel opened the Kerem Shalom crossing, located east of the Rafah crossing, allowing aid trucks to enter Gaza from Israel for the first time since the war began in October.
The UN World Food Program said earlier this month that nearly 60 percent of people in Gaza were on the brink of starvation, and UN officials have warned that the catastrophic situation is worsening and could have irreversible consequences.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced, sheltering in small spaces without proper hygiene and clean water, officials say, and the disease is spreading rapidly. Medical centers across the region have been attacked, closed, or facing a lack of supplies and a reliable source of electricity. The UN has reported groups of people attacking their aid trucks to find food and water.
Katie Rogers contributed reporting from Washington.