United Nations approves resolution for humanitarian pauses between Israel and Hamas
The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution Friday that calls for humanitarian pauses between Israel and Hamas, an increase in aid to Gaza and the creation of conditions for a lasting end to the fighting, thus ending several days of negotiations behind closed doors.
The resolution calls for “urgent and prolonged humanitarian pauses and corridors across the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to allow full, rapid, safe and unimpeded humanitarian access.”
The United States and Russia chose to abstain from voting, forgoing their veto power as permanent members of the body that would have rejected the resolution.
US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield welcomed the resolution but refrained from voting in favor after the text failed to condemn Hamas.
“We would like to see a condemnation of Hamas,” a senior US diplomat told CNN. “We don’t understand why the Council can’t just explain exactly how we got here. But ultimately, that’s what diplomacy is about.”
Throughout what the diplomat called “marathon negotiations,” the United States was keen not to vote against the resolution after facing global criticism for vetoing the latest Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Instead, in Friday’s resolution, the language called for “urgent measures” to lay the foundations for a “sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
“Ultimately, creating conditions for a lasting cessation of hostilities is something that everyone seeks to do,” the diplomat said. “And I think the big dispute over the last few weeks has really been, ‘Is this the right time, right now, for a cessation of hostilities? Or should the conditions be right?’ We were comfortable with this idea that the conditions have to be right for that.”
Sources previously told CNN that a major sticking point regarding the draft resolution was a call for the UN to “establish a monitoring mechanism in the Gaza Strip with the necessary personnel and equipment, under the authority of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
The United States had argued that proposing a UN-created monitoring mechanism for aid to Gaza would be cumbersome and slow the delivery of life-saving assistance.
The senior US official told CNN that the initial idea of setting up a new surveillance system inside Gaza during the war was “completely impractical.”
“The UN told us privately that there was no way to do it. And our assessment was that this was not going to replace the existing mechanisms for the flow of aid,” the diplomat said. “So it would essentially be grafting a new, totally redundant mechanism onto the aid that is already available and would probably create chaos and slow everything down.”
Diplomats were working behind the scenes to finalize the UAE-drafted resolution. A U.S. official familiar with the discussions said the draft resolution begins with an “urgent ceasefire.” The United States and Israel do not currently support a ceasefire, so the United States proposed “more passive language,” the official said, describing the language that ended up in the resolution.
“Israel is aware and can live with that,” the official added, while maintaining that it was not the language on the cessation of hostilities that caused the delays, but rather disagreements over the monitoring mechanism.
Russia’s representative presented an amendment to the Council just before the vote that would have changed the language back to “an immediate cessation of hostilities”, but it was vetoed by the United States.
An Israeli official reacted to the vote, telling CNN: “We are grateful for the efforts of the United States to address the most problematic elements of the proposed resolution. They have really worked hard, and we really appreciate their efforts.”
“In our opinion, the resolution is unnecessary and proves the inability of the UN to play a positive role in the conflict. After almost three months, the UN has still not condemned the massacre of October 7,” he said. declared the manager.
Thomas-Greenfield announced Thursday evening that the United States would support the measure after already voting four times to delay a vote on the resolution. Ultimately, she abstained from voting rather than actively voting in favor of the measure.
“We have certain fundamental positions, including the fact that we believe that the Council should be able to clearly declare that Hamas is responsible for starting this conflict,” the diplomat said.
“This resolution does some things that the previous resolution did not do,” the American diplomat said. “One of them is to deplore all acts of terrorism. And that obviously speaks to what Hamas is responsible for, even if they don’t name it.”
John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, said Thursday that President Joe Biden has been in contact with members of his national security team and U.S. and U.N. officials to discuss.