(Finance) – With 13 votes in favour, zero votes against, and two abstentions from the United States and Russia, the UN Security Council approves the resolution in favor of the United Arab Emirates that it provides more aid to Gaza. Absent from the resolution is the request for an immediate truce. In detail, the resolution approved by the UN Security Council calls for urgent measures to allow immediate and safe humanitarian access, and to “create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities”. The previous wording instead called for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe humanitarian access and urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.
“The real problem is that the way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza. A humanitarian ceasefire is the only way to meet the desperate needs of the people of Gaza – commented the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres –. I believe there is a need for a humanitarian ceasefire but, of course, we are in favor of any pause that would improve the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza and the exchange of prisoners.”
The EU “welcomes” the UN Security Council resolution. The text “calls for a rapid, safe and broader delivery of aid to the population of Gaza and lays the foundations for the end of hostilities”, writes on President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighting that the EU is “working with partners to address the humanitarian emergency and prepare for the aftermath”. The provision of aid to the people of Gaza “is what the EU is asking for”, highlights the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, applauding “the emphasis placed on the need to create the conditions for a sustainable ceasefire”.
The Security Council decision “maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza,” the Security Council said.Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan who thanked the USA and President Biden “for their firm position of being at Israel’s side” and for having “harshly criticized the CDS and the UN for their silence in the face of the atrocities of October 7”. According to Erdan, the UN focused only on aid to Gaza, instead of the “humanitarian hostage crisis”.
“Israel will continue the war until the release of all abductees and the elimination of Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” the Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen however, defining “the Security Council’s decision that the UN guarantees a rationalization in the transfer of humanitarian aid and ensures that it reaches its destination and not to Hamas is right”. Israel, Cohen added, “will continue to act according to international law, but will review all humanitarian aid to Gaza for security reasons.”
“Israel continues to ignore calls for a humanitarian ceasefire. Its siege is inhumane. Israel does not want a future for Palestinians in Palestine and is therefore bombing homes, schools and infrastructure,” said thePalestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour –. Gaza is like a patient whose wounds are being treated while the killer is still shooting. We must stop the killer. Let’s act now to save lives. The resolution is a step in the right direction but there is no way to stop the genocide without a ceasefire.”
According to a report published by 23 UN and non-governmental agencies More than half a million people in Gaza – a quarter of the population – are at risk of starvation. The difficulty in obtaining food among the population has exceeded what has happened in Afghanistan and Yemen in recent years. The report warns that the risk of famine is “increasing every day”, blaming the hunger on insufficient aid entering Gaza. The report found that the entire population of Gaza is in a food crisis, with 576,600 people at “catastrophic” levels of hunger.
“I have never seen something on the scale of what is happening in Gaza. And at this speed,” he said Arif Husain, chief economist of the United Nations World Food Programme.
“We have warned for weeks that, with such deprivation and destruction, each day that passes will only bring more hunger, disease and desperation to the people of Gaza,” commented the UN Deputy Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths on .