UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States, key allies and Arab nations engaged in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another U.S. veto of a new U.N. resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza. The long-delayed vote, last scheduled for Thursday morning, was postponed again.
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood told reporters as he headed into a Security Council meeting on Syria that “We’re still working it. We’re working it very hard.” He said there needed to be some changes in the text “that would make it worthy of our support.”
No new time was set for a vote, and diplomats said Russia called for closed consultations among the 15 council members Thursday afternoon.
The U.S. has been struggling to change the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the Israel-Hamas war, but the key sticking point is the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods. The current draft calls for the U.N. to take over the job from Israel.
Nathan Evans, the spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, stressed that the resolution’s goal is to expand aid getting into Gaza.
“There are still serious and widespread concerns that this resolution as drafted could actually slow down delivery of humanitarian aid by directing the U.N. to create an unworkable monitoring mechanism,” Evans told The Associated Press. “We must ensure any resolution helps and doesn’t hurt the situation on the ground.”
Both the U.N. and aid groups worry that if the U.N. is placed in charge of inspections, it would delay deliveries into Gaza and may not even be possible. Israel insists it must maintain the lead on inspecting deliveries.
A council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because discussions were private, said the U.S. and Egypt are engaging directly to ensure any aid monitoring mechanism can work for everyone.
In a sign of intense U.S. efforts, President Joe Biden told reporters on his way back from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late Wednesday that “we’re negotiating right now at the U.N. the contours of a resolution that we may be able to agree to.”
Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, which sponsored the Arab-backed resolution, said earlier that high-level discussions are underway to try to reach agreement on a text that can be adopted.
“Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and that is implementable on the ground,” she told reporters after the 15 council members held closed consultations early Wednesday afternoon and agreed to the delay. “We believe today, giving a little bit of space for additional diplomacy, could yield positive results.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to the foreign ministers of Egypt and UAE late Wednesday, according to a US official, but the results of the call were unclear.
As part of the U.S. push at the U.N., Blinken spoke Wednesday with the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom and stressed the need for urgent humanitarian aid to Gaza, “the imperative of minimizing civilian casualties,” and preventing further escalation of the conflict and “underscored the U.S. commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Nusseibeh said the UAE is optimistic, but if the negotiations yield no results by Thursday “then we will assess in the council to proceed … to a vote on the resolution.” The vote was first scheduled for Monday.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has said Gaza faces “a humanitarian catastrophe” and that a total collapse of the humanitarian support system would lead to “a complete breakdown of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt.”
According to a report released Thursday by 23 U.N and humanitarian agencies, Gaza’s entire 2.2 million population is in a food crisis or worse and 576,600 are at the “catastrophic” starvation level. With supplies to Gaza cut off except for a small trickle, the U.N. World Food Program has said 90% of the population is regularly going without food for a full day.
