Emmanuel Ukudolo I Friday, Dec. 22, 2023
NEW YORK, United States – The United Nations Security Council, UNSC today passed a resolution to boost the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been subjected to unprecedented bombardment by Israeli Defence Forces, IDF.
The resolution also called for urgent steps ‘to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities’.
The resolution came after several delays based on the opposition of the United States to the language to be deployed in the resolution.
The US lobbied to weaken the language regarding calls for a ceasefire and to allow Israel to continue the war on Gaza.
Nobody voted against the resolution passed today. Specifically, 13 members voted in favour of the resolution, while 2 members abstained, the United States and Russia.
Speaking on the resolution, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan said the resolution failed to condemn Hamas for the October 7 attack but said that the UN should also be able to stop Hamas from smuggling weapons into Gaza.
He said the resolution maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza.
“It must not be ignored that the Security Council as a body has not yet condemned the October 7 massacre. This is a disgrace.
“The UN’s focus only on the aid mechanism for Gaza is unnecessary and disconnected from reality. Israel, in any case, allows the entry of aid on any necessary scale”, he said, adding that the UN should have focused on the humanitarian crisis of the hostages held in Gaza.
“The failures of the UN in the last 17 years have allowed Hamas to dig terror tunnels and manufacture missiles and rockets. It is clear that the UN cannot be trusted to monitor the incoming aid to the Gaza Strip”, the Israeli representative at the UN said.
In his reaction, Deputy Palestine Permanent Observer to the the UN, Majed Bamya said Israel’s target is not only the past and the present of the Palestinian people, but indeed the future.
“That is why it kills our doctors, engineers, poets, academics, artists. That is why it is destroying our cities and towns, our universities and cultural institutions.
“That is why it kills our children and terrorises and traumatises them, scarring and disfiguring their futures. We often quote the number of children killed, an unbearable tragedy, but we should not forget the 25,000 children orphaned, and the tens of thousands wounded and amputated.
“A 12-year old Palestinian girl, with the most beautiful of names Dunya, which means the world, lost both her parents, her sister and her brother, all killed in Israel’s shelling of her house.
“She also lost her leg. And Dunya said that while she will never forget her loved ones, she has to continue living. That she would become a doctor to help children as doctors helped her”, he said.
