The United Nations (UN) Security Council called for boosting humanitarian assistance for Gaza, but the UN chief said the way Israel was conducting its military operation was creating “massive obstacles” to aid distribution inside the battered enclave.
After days of wrangling to avert a threatened United States (US) veto, the Security Council on Friday passed a resolutionurging steps to allow “safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access” to Gaza and “conditions for a sustainable cessation” of fighting.
The resolution was toned down from earlier drafts that called for an immediate end to 11 weeks of war and diluting Israeli control over aid deliveries, clearing the way for the vote in which the United States, Israel’s main ally, abstained.
Washington repeatedly has backed Israel’s right to self-defense following the Oct. 7 rampage into Israel by Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants, who killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages back into the enclave.
Gilad Erdan, Israel’s UN ambassador, said the Security Council should have focused more on freeing the hostages and that concentrating on “aid mechanisms” was unnecessary as Israel permits “aid deliveries at the required scale.”
Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority split over the measure, with the former saying it was “insufficient” to meet the stricken enclave’s needs and defied international calls for an end to “Israel’s aggression.
Source: eNCA
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