UN Security Council struggles to ‘speak with one voice’ on Gaza

Members of the UN Security Council hold sideline meetings as they take a break at the United Nations headquarters on December 19, 2023 in New York City. (AFP)

• “The negotiations are complex but we hope to see the council speak with one voice today,” said the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh

UNITED NATIONS, United States: The UN Security Council is struggling to find a unified voice on the war in Gaza, recently swapping a call for a “lasting cessation of hostilities” with a draft resolution demanding the fighting’s “suspension.”
Members of the council are grappling to find common ground ahead of a vote on the resolution scheduled for Tuesday — which was pushed back several times throughout the day, according to diplomatic sources, after being postponed Monday.
Israel, backed by its ally Washington, a veto-wielding permanent Security Council member, has opposed the term “cease-fire.” That has proved to be one of the sticking points for the divided body as diplomats wrangle over whether to call for a “pause” or a “truce,” or to qualify any cease-fire as “humanitarian.”
“The negotiations are complex but we hope to see the council speak with one voice today,” said the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh.
The current struggle comes after an impasse earlier this month, when the United States, despite unprecedented pressure from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, blocked the adoption of a Security Council resolution on the war.
It had called for an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel continues its deadly strikes in retaliation for Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack.
Last week, the General Assembly adopted the same nonbinding resolution by 153 votes to 10, with 23 abstentions, out of 193 member states.
Bolstered by that overwhelming support, Arab countries announced the new attempt at the Security Council.
A draft text prepared by the UAE, obtained by AFP on Sunday, called for “an urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities to allow unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”
But according to diplomatic sources, a new, modified text is now on the table, in an attempt to salvage a compromise.
It is less direct, calling for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps toward a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”
As in previous texts, Hamas is not named in the current draft resolution — a move that has in the past drawn ire from the United States.
Instead, it “firmly” condemns “all indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects... and all acts of terrorism.”
It also demands “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
The new draft text also calls on all sides to allow aid to be distributed across Gaza, as well as for Guterres to put in place a monitoring system for the aid.
Senior United Nations official Tor Wennesland said on Tuesday that Israel’s steps to allow aid into Gaza until now have been “far short of what is needed.”
“The delivery of humanitarian aid in the (Gaza) Strip continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges,” said Wennesland, the organization’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process.
“Limited (humanitarian) steps by Israel... are positive, but fall far short of what is needed to address the human catastrophe on the ground.”
Earlier in the day, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his country was “ready for another humanitarian pause and additional humanitarian aid in order to enable the release of hostages.”
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington “would welcome a resolution that fully supports addressing the humanitarian needs of the people in Gaza.”
“But... the details of it very much do matter,” he said.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Security Council faced criticism for only adopting a single text, in mid-November, calling for days-long humanitarian “pauses” to allow aid in.
Five other draft resolutions were rejected, two of them due to US vetoes.
President Joe Biden meanwhile has exhibited growing impatience with Israel, warning it risks losing international support for its “indiscriminate” bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
After the attack on October 7, which Israeli authorities say left around 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas. It has since pounded the Palestinian territory, laying siege to it and conducting a vast ground operation.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israel’s military response has killed more than 19,667 people, mostly women and children.