The US has declared it is ready to support a UN security council resolution intended to boost the flow of humanitarian supplies into Gaza after a week of negotiations and substantial amendments, including the removal of a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities”.
A vote on the resolution was postponed for a fourth day in a row until Friday, after negotiations late into the evening, but the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the US and Arab states had come up with an amended version Washington could support.
“We’re ready to vote on it. And it’s a resolution that will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “It will support the priority that Egypt has in ensuring that we put a mechanism on the ground that will support humanitarian assistance, and we’re ready to move forward.”
It was not clear whether other council members, particularly Russia, would accept the changes. A postponement of a vote until Friday was agreed to allow UN missions to consult their capitals.
In a draft of the amended resolution seen by the Guardian, a call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” to allow humanitarian relief, has been removed, and replaced with an appeal for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
A section calling for the UN secretary general to set up a mechanism that would “exclusively” be responsible for monitoring aid shipments has been amended to call for the appointment of a “senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator” with responsibility for “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying in Gaza, as appropriate, the humanitarian nature of all humanitarian relief consignments”.
This coordinator, who is to be appointed “expeditiously” is supposed to “establish a UN mechanism for accelerating the provision of humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza” while consulting with “all relevant parties”, a reference primarily to Israel.
The draft resolutions “demands that the parties to the conflict cooperate with the coordinator to fulfil their mandate without delay or obstruction”.
It was unclear what difference the new language on humanitarian delivery would make to aid convoys, but Thomas-Greenfield denied the resolution had been watered down.
“The draft resolution is a very strong resolution that is fully supported by the Arab group that provides them what they feel is needed to get humanitarian assistance on the ground,” she said.
In this week’s negotiations, the US had argued the original wording, giving the UN “exclusive control” of a humanitarian delivery mechanism that would last a year, was inflexible and could end up hindering the delivery of emergency supplies.
The removal of the call for a suspension of hostilities will ease the international pressure on Israel, which has rejected deadlines for completing its offensive. So to will the editing out of a paragraph in the original resolution which “firmly condemns all violations of international humanitarian law, including all indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, all violence and hostilities against civilians, and all acts of terrorism.”
“The US may have managed to turn a very bad situation into an opportunity. They have managed to water down the text so much that Washington can buy it, but Russia in particular will struggle to swallow it,” Richard Gowan, UN director at the International Crisis Group, said. “The language around creating conditions for a cessation of hostilities is incredibly opaque.”
“The language around the coordinator is pure garble,” Gowan added. “There is still the nod to the idea of a UN humanitarian mechanism, but it is so blurry that it gives the UN very little guidance or leverage.”
