Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally thanked US President Joe Biden for standing with Israel and helping tone down language on a resolution to expedite humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, which the United Nations Security Council approved in a 13-0 vote on Friday.
Both the United States and Russia abstained from the resolution by the 15-member UNSC, which focused on the importance of humanitarian pauses.
The text did not call for a ceasefire, a point that was particularly important to Israel.
Netanyahu told Biden in a phone call on Saturday night that Israel would “continue the war until all its goals are completed,” the Prime Minister’s Office said.
Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan lauded the fact that “the resolution maintains Israel’s security authority to monitor and inspect aid entering Gaza,” in a post he placed on X.
Erdan thanked Biden, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and her office “for standing on Israel’s side throughout the negotiations on the UN Security Council resolution and maintaining defined redlines” even as he said it was “disgraceful that the text failed to condemn Hamas.”
The resolution called “for urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors throughout the Gaza Strip for a sufficient number of days to enable full, rapid, safe, and unhindered humanitarian access and to enable urgent rescue and recovery efforts.”
It also demanded “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address medical needs of all hostages” held in Gaza.
Israel estimates that some 129 remain out of some 250 hostages who were seized when Hamas infiltrated Israel on October 7, killing over 1,200 people. Qatar and Egypt are attempting to mediate a third-party agreement to secure the release of the hostages.
Hamas has asked for a permanent ceasefire, while Israel has insisted that it can only agree to a temporary ceasefire because it is determined to complete its military campaign to destroy Hamas.
The terror organization has asserted that some 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in war-related violence, while some 1.9 million of the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants have been displaced.
The displacement of so many people and the intense Israeli military campaign that has taken down utility systems, and destroyed roads and transportation options – together with continued IDF bombardment – has complicated the distribution of aid.
Israel has blamed the UN for delays in aid distribution, explaining that a higher volume of supplies could enter the enclave. The UN in turn has argued that it is impossible to operate under such conditions.
Friday’s UNSC resolution asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to appoint a “Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator” tasked with oversight for “facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying” that the goods entering Gaza are of a humanitarian nature. It also asked the UN to create a “mechanism for accelerating” humanitarian assistance, including a streamlining of the process.
The resolution does not condemn Hamas
The resolution did not condemn Hamas or even name the terror group. It also called for a two-state resolution to the conflict and for the unification of Gaza and the West Bank under Palestinian Authority rule.
Its passage marked the second time the UNSC has called for a humanitarian pause since the start of the war.
Washington abstained from both of those votes, because of the failure to condemn Hamas, but otherwise has welcomed them.
“There is no doubt that [the vote] today was a massive positive step” even though the “resolution is not perfect,” Thomas-Greenfield told reporters.
“We were appalled that some council members still refuse to condemn Hamas’s horrific terror attack on October 7, which set so much heartbreak and suffering in motion,” she said. “We will continue to push the council to right this wrong.”
From Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said that “Israel will continue to act according to international law, and will continue to screen all humanitarian aid to Gaza for security reasons.
“The Security Council’s decision emphasizes the need to ensure that the UN becomes more efficient in transferring the humanitarian aid and to make sure that the aid reaches its destination and does not end up in the hands of Hamas terrorists,” he said.
The Palestinian foreign ministry and Hamas issued opposing statements on Friday in response to the adoption by the United Nations Security Council of the resolution intended to help bring more humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The PA Foreign Ministry called the resolution “a step in the right direction,” and said it would help “end the aggression, ensure the arrival of aid and protect the Palestinian people.”
“We consider it a step that may contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people in the Gaza Strip,” the foreign ministry statement said.
But Hamas called the resolution an “insufficient step” for meeting the impoverished enclave’s needs.
“During the past five days, the US administration has worked hard to empty this resolution of its essence and to issue it in this weak formula,” the statement said. “It defies the will of the international community and the United Nations General Assembly in stopping Israel’s aggression against our defenseless Palestinian people.”
Guterres, who had initiated the process that led the United Arab Emirates to submit the resolution on Gaza to the UNSC, spoke Friday after the vote about his frustration regarding the ongoing war as he called on Israel to halt its military campaign.
“A humanitarian ceasefire is the only way to begin to meet the desperate needs of people in Gaza and end their ongoing nightmare,” he said.
“I hope that today’s Security Council Resolution may help this finally to happen, but much more is needed immediately,” Guterres told reporters in New York on Friday.
He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, explaining that the “way Israel is conducting this offensive is creating massive obstacles to the distribution of humanitarian aid inside Gaza.”
Reuters contributed to this report
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