An emergency meeting of the UN security council requested by the United Arab Emirates will be held on Monday as the council’s Arab representative seeks a binding resolution demanding that Israel accepts a humanitarian pause to the fighting in Gaza.
One hour after Israel launched its expanded operations in Gaza on Friday, the 193-strong UN general assembly voted 120 to 14 with 55 countries abstaining for a humanitarian pause, but the assembly, bringing together all nations recognised by the UN, does not have the power to pass binding resolutions, unlike the 15-strong security council.
In its statement seeking an emergency security council meeting, the UAE ministry of foreign affairs underlined “the importance of the protection of civilians, according to international humanitarian law, international treaties for the protection of civilians and human rights, and the need to ensure that they are not targeted during conflict”.
Discussions about a further security council resolution may take time to complete so a vote may be deferred until later.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, called on the international community to cease funding the UN after Friday’s UN general assembly vote, which did not condemn Hamas.
“Every honest country should defund the UN. Until the bias stops and the antisemitism stops, we can no longer continue business as usual,” he told Fox News. Erdan said the recent resolution was “unfathomable”, saying it showed the UN had “completely lost its legitimacy and relevance”.
The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said on Sunday he regretted that “instead of a critically needed humanitarian pause, supported by the international community, Israel has intensified its military operations”.
“The world is witnessing a humanitarian catastrophe taking place before our eyes. More than 2 million people, with nowhere safe to go, are being denied the essentials for life – food, water, shelter and medical care – while being subjected to relentless bombardment. “I urge all those with responsibility to step back from the brink.”
Since 21 October, only 94 humanitarian aid trucks have been able to arrive through the Rafah crossing, but Israel has not allowed any fuel into Gaza, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
In a sign of growing tensions between the US and Israel, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said Israel had to make a distinction between military and civilian targets. Speaking to CNN, he said Israel was solely responsible for its military operations. “They’re the ones making decisions, they’re the ones conducting the operations,” he said, declining to openly criticise any aspect of the new military effort.
“I’m not going to react to every strike, every move that they make,” he said.
“We’ve asked them hard questions, the same hard questions that we would ask ourselves if we were seeking to conduct an operation to take out a terrorist threat,” Sullivan said. “We’ve pressed them on questions like objectives and matching means to objectives, about both tactical and strategic issues associated with this operation.”
He said Netanyahu also had a responsibility to rein in settlers, adding it was “totally unacceptable to have extremist settler violence” against innocent people in the West Bank.
Netanyahu spoke on Sunday with Joe Biden, Netanyahu’s office said. The Israeli statement did not expand on the conversation.
Biden also is facing pressure from within his own Democratic party to call for a ceasefire. A Gallup poll released last week showed the US president’s popularity among Democrats had fallen by 11 points this month. Biden has strongly supported Israel’s right to self-defence after the brutal attack by Hamas on 7 October.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, criticised Israeli attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. He also spoke with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak. The two men “agreeed on efforts to get crucial food, fuel, water and medicine to those who need it, and to get foreign nationals out”, according to a Downing Street spokesperson.
According to a readout by Macron’s office, the leaders also reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself within the limits of international law and the importance of finding a way to release the hostages held by Hamas.
Both leaders said the long-stalled two-state solution, envisaging independent states for the Israelis and Palestinians, was the best way to create peace.
The UAE has asked for UN aid head, Martin Griffiths, and Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency providing aid to Palestinians (UNRWA), to brief the security council on Monday.
Four previous efforts to secure some form of ceasefire resolution have so far failed at the security council due either to Russia or the US wielding its veto, but the pressure is now on all sides to end the arguments between superpowers over responsibility for the explosion in violence and instead focus on bringing the bloodshed to an end.
In a sign of the tensions being created in some of the debates at the UN, Thailand reproached Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador, for showing a video to the UN general assembly depicting a Hamas terrorist attempting to behead a Thai national during the 7 October attack.
The Thai foreign ministry said it “disapproves of the display of such footage, which does not afford the proper respect and due consideration for the deceased and his family”.
