UN Security Council’s decision on a ceasefire in Gaza has been postponed

A vote by the UN Security Council on a much-delayed resolution demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict was rescheduled for this coming Wednesday due to dissenting opinions among members and the steadily rising death toll in Gaza.

“To give diplomacy more time, the Security Council has decided to go on with talks today. The rotating chair of the council, held by Ecuador’s Jose Javier De La Gasca Lopez-Dominguez, said that the adoption would now take place early on Thursday morning.

The council has been struggling for days to come to an agreement on the resolution, whose vote was first postponed on Monday and then rescheduled many times on Tuesday.

The United States, an ally of Israel and a permanent Security Council member with veto power, has supported Israel’s opposition to the word “ceasefire.”

The “elimination” of Hamas is a must for any truce in Gaza, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on Wednesday.

But using the Russian-Arab Cooperation Forum in Morocco to urge for a truce, Russia and the Arab League increased diplomatic pressure on Israel to end hostilities.

The International Crisis Group’s Richard Gowan said prior to the most recent delay that “everyone is basically stuck waiting to see what the US will decide to do.”

“It looks like even US diplomats do not know how this saga will end,” he said.

The back and forth this week follows a deadlock that occurred earlier this month when the US prevented the approval of a Security Council resolution on the conflict in spite of extraordinary pressure from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

The resolution demanded an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is still carrying out lethal attacks as payback for Hamas’s historic offensive on October 7.

‘Human disaster’

The identical nonbinding resolution was approved last week by the UN General Assembly, which consists of 193 member nations, by 153 votes to 10 with 23 abstentions.

Encouraged by the resounding backing, Arab nations declared their fresh endeavor to the Security Council.

A UAE-prepared draft letter that AFP was able to read on Sunday demanded “an urgent and lasting cessation of hostilities to allow unimpeded access of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip.”

AFP, however, saw a revised version of the document that seemed to attempt to salvage a compromise.

It was more indirect, requesting “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

Israel’s “limited” efforts to get supplies into Gaza, according to UN official Tor Wennesland, “are positive, but fall far short of what is needed to address the human catastrophe on the ground.”

Israel promised to “annihilate” Hamas after the assault on October 7, which according to Israeli officials claimed the lives of around 1,140 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians.

The Hamas administration in Gaza said that 20,000 people had died within Palestinian territory.