The Security Council met for the fifth time on Monday over the war between Israel and Hamas, amid intense calls from senior UN officials for an immediate humanitarian pause in the fighting in Gaza. While the General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution on Friday calling for an immediate ceasefire, the Council, which has legally binding powers, has failed to reach a consensus after four attempts.
A Chinese and Russian veto blocked one humanitarian text, a veto from the United States blocked another while two additional drafts failed to reach the minimum number of votes in favour required for passage.
UN Officials addressed the Security Council on Monday: UN RWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini says, “I have said many times, and I will say it again – No place is safe in Gaza.”
UNICEF’s Executive Director Catherine Russell says, “I implore the Security Council to immediately adopt a resolution that reminds parties of their obligations under international law, calls for a ceasefire, demands that parties allow safe and unimpeded humanitarian access.”
Director in the Office for the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs, Lisa Doughten says, “The scale of the horror people are experiencing in Gaza is hard to convey. People are becoming increasingly desperate, as they search for food, water and shelter amid a relentless bombing campaign that is wiping out whole families and entire neighborhoods.”
A humanitarian catastrophe while a divided Security Council simply cannot muster the consensus required to bring this conflict to heel – and denounced by an emotional Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour.
“The General Assembly acted. The Secretary-General acted. The army his humanitarian agencies and the heroes leading them and those who are working to implement that message – acted. And there is one important body still not acting, it is you. Do what the bigger body is doing. Rise up to your responsibility and what you should do instead of dragging the paralysis.”
But emotions ran deep on both sides of the argument with the Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan saying he and his team intended to don a yellow star of David until the Council condemned Hamas – while echoing his Prime Minister that a ceasefire was out of the question.
“Israel refuses to supply the enemy, Hamas, with any aid in accordance with international law. Hamas is the root cause of the situation in Gaza. Yet you continue to insist on calling this meeting a discussion of the Palestinian question. Can anyone here provide a solution to the Palestinian question as long as Hamas controls Gaza? Calling for an immediate cease-fire is ultimately asking to tie Israel’s hands, and keep Hamas’s rule in Gaza.”
While the big powers predictably went after each other about who was doing the least.
Russia’s Ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia says, “I would like to ask the Permanent Representative of the USA a question. Can you explain why you oppose a ceasefire? Does this mean that the USA, as a permanent member of the Security Council, supports the doctrine of a massive retaliation in Gaza? Where is your compassion for civilians that you so eloquently express at every Security Council meeting on Ukraine? And thus, even though the lives of civilians in Ukraine are far from facing the same level of threat as Palestinians in Gaza? Or is it that you only think about what those who are in the European continent and that Palestinian lives don’t stir any emotions in Washington?”
Washington’s response through alternate Ambassador Robert Wood: “This is a typical Russian narrative that has, again, no basis in fact. Russia, frankly, has no credibility. Its prevarication knows no bounds. It claims to care about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I think it’s pretty clear Russia doesn’t care about solving crises, humanitarian crisis. It creates them.”
Frustration, even here … is beginning to boil over – as the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh, put it.
“As we sit here in this chamber in New York, speaking to each other again and again and debating the language of our humanitarian resolution and response and evacuation order in these conditions is cruel. It is reckless. And so is our delay as a Security Council.”
We can confirm that the Council is again considering a draft resolution on humanitarian pauses, the success of passage is hard to predict after four failures.
But if it’s about the impact on the ground, it won’t matter much after Israel rejected all calls for a ceasefire, arguing that it would only strengthen Hamas. And, as a result, an international community may now be forced to look for solutions outside of the structures and constraints that the multilateralism of the UN currently offers.
Source: eNCA
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