UN Security Council expected to vote on Gaza humanitarian resolution after week of debates

The 15 members of the United Nations Security Council are expected to vote on a resolution Friday addressing the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip after a week of intense negotiations to bring the U.S. on board. 

“We have worked hard and diligently over the course of the past week with the Emiratis, with others, with Egypt, to come up with a resolution that we can support,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told reporters Thursday evening.

Thomas-Greenfield did not say whether she would vote in favor of the resolution or abstain, but signaled that the U.S. would not use its veto power as it did on a resolution proposed Dec. 8 that demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire.

Thomas-Greenfield said the agreement reached Thursday night on the text of the United Arab Emirates-authored resolution “will bring humanitarian assistance to those in need.”

“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,” she added.

Key phrases of the text include a call for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses,” The Washington Post reported, and for crossings into the Gaza Strip to be opened “for a sufficient number of days to enable full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access.”

One sticking point came on the responsibility of a U.N.-appointed special coordinator for delivery of humanitarian assistance, with the text reportedly saying the official would oversee coordination of humanitarian deliveries, instead of having “exclusive” control over the security inspections over goods entering the strip. 

Member states spent a week in consultations over the resolution, which was aimed at calling for some sort of pause in fighting amid Israel’s war against Hamas and the scale up of humanitarian assistance to a population in the Gaza Strip suffering from mass displacement and starvation.

A U.N.-backed analysis group is raising alarm that nearly Gaza’s entire population of 2.2 million people is facing crisis levels of hunger, with the fighting between Israel and Hamas blocking efforts to scale up humanitarian deliveries to the vast majority of the population.

The latest data, provided by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), underscored that virtually all households are skipping meals every day, that adults are going hungry so their children can eat and that delivery of humanitarian assistance is “extremely inadequate.”

The IPC is also warning of a risk of famine, saying some of their data points to this threshold are being crossed, and warning that the situation is likely to expand.

“The cessation of hostilities and the restoration of humanitarian space to deliver this multi-sectoral assistance and restore services are essential first steps in eliminating any risk of Famine,” the IPC wrote in its report. 

Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group, says death toll estimates in Gaza have have exceeded 20,000 people. While that number is difficult to independently verify, international aid organizations have supported Gazan health officials’ estimates, and the U.S., while noting Hamas does not separate the numbers of its fighters killed, generally accepts the numbers. 

Israel launched its military operation in response to Hamas’s attack against the country Oct. 7, when an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 240 people taken hostage.

The U.S. supports Israel in rejecting a total cease-fire, saying it would allow Hamas to regroup militarily, posing a threat to Israel’s security. But the U.S. is working with Israel to enact a pause in fighting to allow for the release of hostages held by Hamas; a weeklong pause at the end of November saw more than 100 hostages released, though Israel and the U.S. blame Hamas for ending that truce.