The UN Security Council was expected to vote Friday on a resolution to increase aid to Gaza amid warnings that the Israel-Hamas war was pushing the enclave toward famine.
As the territory’s conditions deteriorate, the UN Security Council has been occupied with negotiating on a resolution that would increase aid deliveries.
The most recent draft, due to be voted on Friday (22 December), calls for “urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” However, it does not call for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
Israel, with US support, opposed the term “ceasefire.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Wednesday that there would be no ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until Hamas was “eliminated.”
The war broke out on October 7 when Hamas militants broke through the Gaza border and killed about 1,140 people in Israel, taking some 250 hostages. In response, Israel launched bombardments of the Gaza Strip as well as a ground offensive that killed at least 20,000 people, the Gaza Health Ministry reported on Wednesday.
The entire population of Gaza faces “an imminent risk of famine,” with more than half a million people suffering “catastrophic conditions,” according to UN-backed global hunger monitoring system on Thursday. UN humanitarian chief, Martin Griffiths, claimed:
We have been warning for weeks that, with such deprivation and destruction, each day that goes by will only bring more hunger, disease and despair to the people of Gaza.
On Friday, Israel approved the temporary opening of the Kerem Shalom Crossing to allow humanitarian aid directly into the Gaza Strip rather than through the Rafah Crossing from Egypt.
A spokesman for the UN secretary-general, Stephane Dujarric, stated that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, was “unable to receive [aid] trucks” through Kerem Shalom after the “drone strike,” and that the World Food Programme had suspended operations in that area.
On Thursday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari reported that Israeli troops had killed more than 2,000 Palestinian militants since the week-long ceasefire ended on December 1.
At the same time, the UN human rights office in Ramallah claimed to have received reports that Israeli troops “summarily killed” at least 11 unarmed Palestinians in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza City this week. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, dismissed the allegations as “yet another example of the partisan and prejudiced approach against Israel” by the UN.
The military wing of Hamas declared Thursday that Israel’s goal of eliminating it was “doomed to fail” and that further hostage releases depended on “the cessation of hostilities.”
