UN urges more Gaza aid, UN chief says Israel creating distribution 'obstacles'
After days of wrangling to avert a threatened U.S. veto, the Security Council on Friday passed a resolution urging 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 U.N. 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.»
The authority's foreign ministry welcomed the resolution as a step that would help «end the aggression, ensure the arrival of aid and protect the Palestinian people.»
The United States and Israel, which has vowed to eradicate Hamas, oppose a ceasefire, contending it would allow the Islamist militant group to regroup and rearm.
U.S. President Joe Biden's administration, however, has grown increasingly critical of the mounting casualty toll and humanitarian crisis that has worsened as Israel presses on with its ground
