Israel-Gaza war live: UN security council resolution on Gaza’s aid delivery remains stalled, report says | Israel-Gaza war

The US envoy to the United Nations, ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield has been speaking in New York, and says that the US can support a current draft Security Council resolution on Gaza Aid, according to Reuters.

A short time before that, Reuters reported that the UN security council vote on a bid to boost Gaza action had been delayed another day until Friday, sourcing that to diplomats.

Earlier we were hearing from Associated Press that agreement on a UN resolution on critical aid for Gaza was is ‘very close’ and a vote could be expected.

Shahad Matar, spokesperson for the United Arab Emirates which sponsored the Security Council resolution, told reporters late Thursday that “we’re very close to agreement.” She said the 15 council members would hold closed consultations to see changes to the draft resolution, and a vote would then take place.

The United States, key allies and Arab nations have been engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza.

The US had voiced concerns about the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the war as well as the key sticking point – the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods.

The World Food Programme says its latest food security analysis for Gaza, shows that the entire population of Gaza is in crisis or worse levels of acute food insecurity.

The report further highlighted that 26 percent of Gazans have exhausted their food supplies and coping capacities and face catastrophic hunger and starvation. The WFP’s Executive Director Cindy McCain says:

WFP has warned of this coming catastrophe for weeks. Tragically, without the safe, consistent access we have been calling for, the situation is desperate, and no one in Gaza is safe from starvation.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in history, according to Associated Press. The agency reports:

In just over two months, the offensive has wreaked more destruction than the razing of Syria’s Aleppo between 2012 and 2016, Ukraine’s Mariupol or, proportionally, the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II. It has killed more civilians than the US-led coalition did in its three-year campaign against the Islamic State group.

The Israeli military has said little about what kinds of bombs and artillery it is using in Gaza. But from blast fragments found on-site and analyses of strike footage, experts are confident that the vast majority of bombs dropped on the besieged enclave are U.S.-made. They say the weapons include 2,000-pound (900-kilogram) “bunker-busters” that have killed hundreds in densely populated areas.

The Associated Press goes on to say that the Israeli military says every strike is cleared by legal advisers to make sure it complies with international law:

“We choose the right munition for each target – so it doesn’t cause unnecessary damage,” said the army’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“Hamas is very entrenched within the civilian population,” Efraim Inbar, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, a thinktank, told Associated Press about why the level of destruction is so high. He also said intense bombardment of Hamas’ tunnels is needed to protect advancing Israeli ground forces from attacks.

The Queen of Jordan, Rania Al Abdullah has written an opinion piece in the Washington Post about the war. In it she says:

This has become an unequivocal humanitarian nightmare. With each passing day, the threshold of what is acceptable falls to new lows, setting a terrifying precedent for this and other wars to come.

No matter what side you support, you can still demand a cease-fire, the release of hostages and detainees, and unrestricted access to aid.

The Queen of Jordan goes on to say:

A cease-fire is just the beginning. We must also embark on the difficult process of rehumanization — recognizing the humanity of others and acting on that universal kinship.

Agreement on a UN resolution on critical aid for Gaza is ‘very close’ and a vote could be expected, Associated Press is reporting.

Shahad Matar, spokesperson for the United Arab Emirates which sponsored the Security Council resolution, told reporters late Thursday that “we’re very close to agreement.” She said the 15 council members would hold closed consultations to see changes to the draft resolution, and a vote would then take place.

The United States, key allies and Arab nations have been engaging in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto of a UN resolution on desperately needed aid to Gaza.

Whether the changes are enough to meet US concerns about the text’s references to a cessation of hostilities in the war as well as the key sticking point – the inspection of aid trucks entering into Gaza to ensure they are only carrying humanitarian goods – remained to be seen.

The current draft calls for the UN to take over the job from Israel, which the United States and Israel, its close ally, oppose, Associated Press reports.

Reged Ahmad here, picking up the blog from Maya Yang

Summary

Maya Yang

Israeli forces invaded the Palestinian Red Crescent Society’s ambulance center in Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday evening, according to the PRCS.

The PRCS added that Israeli forces arrested the crews and paramedics and took them to an unknown location while children and women remain trapped inside the center.

The PRCS went on to urge the international community to demand the release of its staff members and to ensure their protection amid Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

US senator Bernie Sanders has called on the US to not provide “another $10bn to the rightwing extremist [Benjamin] Netanyahu government to continue their war against the Palestinian people”.

In an address to the US senate, Sanders said:

The Netanyahu government is continuing its military approach which is both immoral and in violation of international law …

The United States must end our complicity in those actions and to do so, we must make two critical changes in our policy.

First, while it is appropriate to support defensive systems like Iron Dome to protect Israeli civilians against incoming rockets, it would be irresponsible to provide an additional $10.1bn in military aid beyond those defensive systems as contained in the proposed supplemental foreign aid package …

Second … the United States should support efforts at the UN security council to end the bloodshed.

US ambassador to the UN on stalled UN security council resolution: ‘We’re not there yet’

Canada’s immigration minister has announced temporary visas for people in Gaza with Canadian relatives, the Associated Press reports.

In an announcement on Thursday, the immigration minister, Marc Miller, said that despite the offer of temporary visas, Canada cannot guarantee safe passage out of Gaza.

He added that he expects the program to be ready by 9 January and that the government will start accepting applications for people with extended family connections to Canada including parents, grandparents, siblings and grandchildren.

Miller also said that people will be offered three-year visas if they meet eligibility and admissibility criteria.

Israeli strikes on south Lebanon killed an elderly woman on Thursday while retaliatatory attacks from Hezbollah wounded two civilians, according to Israel’s military.

Agence France-Presse reports:

Lebanon’s official National News Agency (NNA) said that Israeli “bombing on the town of Maroun al-Ras this morning killed a woman and wounded her husband.”

Artillery shells struck “residential neighbourhoods” in the town, hitting the house of the couple in their eighties, the agency added.

Rescuers who transported the pair to hospital confirmed her death to AFP, and also blamed Israel for the strike.

Earlier this week, the Iran-backed Hezbollah group vowed that any Israeli attacks on civilians “will be reciprocated.”

The Shiite Muslim movement said it struck the border villages of Dovev and Avivim “in response” to Thursday’s deadly strike, later claiming several other attacks on additional Israeli targets including with drones.

The Israeli army said that “two Israeli civilians were lightly injured as a result of the launches toward the area of Dovev,” adding that the military struck the source of the fire.

Later on Thursday, Lebanon’s NNA reported multiple members of one family had been wounded in a “hostile drone” strike on a house near the area of Maroun al-Ras.

It also reported Israeli bombardment on other locations near the border.

Overnight, Israel had launched a rare deep strike into Lebanese territory, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) from the border, the NNA said.

Ahead of the UN security council vote surrounding aid delivery into Gaza, the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps said that “Gaza is out of time” and needs aid delivery as soon as possible.

In a statement released on Thursday, Kate Phillips-Barrasso, Mercy Corps’s vice-president of global policy and advocacy, said:

Gaza is out of time. We need a resolution that calls for a suspension of hostilities so we can actually deliver aid to starving people who have gone without the basics of life for two months.

We urge that an exclusive, independent mechanism be part of that agreement both in principle and in practice. As in other conflicts, independent monitoring mechanisms are critical to ensuring aid gets to people quickly and does not involve parties to the conflict determining what gets in and how fast.”

Here are some more images from the Israel-Gaza war, sent to us over the news wires:

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal has this report about claims that Israel is deliberately, and illegally, targeting Palestinian journalists as its military onslaught in Gaza continues:

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has accused the Israeli military of targeting journalists and their families in Gaza amid the highest death toll of media workers in any recent conflict.

The New York-based CPJ said at least 68 journalists and other media workers had been killed in Gaza, Israel and southern Lebanon since the Hamas cross-border attack on 7 October and subsequent Israeli assault.

“More journalists have been killed in the first 10 weeks of the Israel-Gaza war than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year,” it said.

“CPJ is particularly concerned about an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military. In at least one case, a journalist was killed while clearly wearing press insignia in a location where no fighting was taking place. In at least two other cases, journalists reported receiving threats from Israeli officials and Israel Defense Forces officers before their family members were killed.”

The CPJ called for Israel to “end the longstanding pattern of impunity in cases of journalists killed by the IDF”.

Sixty-one of the journalists killed were Palestinian and three were Lebanese. In addition, four Israeli journalists were among the 1,200 people, mostly civilians, killed by Hamas in the October attack.

Israel has killed at least 20,000 other Palestinians during the present war, about 1% of the population of Gaza, including more than 8,000 children.

Read the full story:

Morgue workers at Gaza’s Nasser hospital have spoken with Reuters about the increasing difficulties they face in calculating the civilian death toll from the Israel-Gaza war in the face of deadly air strikes.

The volunteer workers give a harrowing account of trying to identify mutilated corpses, which they wrap in white cloth, working all the time with the stench of death all around them. According to the Reuters report:

Some of the bodies are badly mutilated. Only those that have been identified or claimed by relatives can go for burial and be included in the Gaza health ministry’s death toll for the war. The rest are stored in the morgue’s refrigerator, often for weeks.

With most hospitals across Gaza now closed, hundreds of doctors and other health workers killed, and communications hampered by lack of fuel and electricity, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compile the casualty figures.

The morgue workers at the Nasser Hospital are part of an international effort – including doctors and health officials in Gaza as well as academics, activists and volunteers around the world – to ensure the toll doesn’t become a casualty of the increasingly dire conditions of the war.

The report comes as the World Health Organization says northern Gaza no longer has a functional hospital, and the United Nations warns that Gaza’s entire population of 2.3m is facing crisis levels of hunger as the risk of famine increases each day.

You can read the Reuters report here.

We’re still waiting for news about when, or indeed if, the UN security council will vote on Thursday afternoon on a new ceasefire resolution for Gaza.

There had been hope it would take place by lunchtime, but delegates agreed to postpone the vote to allow for more negotiations. The Associated Press reports that the US, key allies and Arab nations are engaged in high-level diplomacy in hopes of avoiding another US veto.

US deputy ambassador Robert Wood , who cast the vote that doomed the most recent ceasefire effort two weeks ago, told reporters on Thursday morning: “We’re still working it. We’re working it very hard.” He said there needed to be some changes in the text “that would make it worthy of our support”.

Ambassador Lana Nusseibeh of the United Arab Emirates, which sponsored the Arab-backed resolution, said: “Everyone wants to see a resolution that has impact and that is implementable on the ground. We believe today, giving a little bit of space for additional diplomacy, could yield positive results.”

No new time has been for a vote, and the AP said diplomats told the news agency that Russia called for closed consultations among the 15 council members on Thursday afternoon.

We’ll bring you any developments as they happen.

Summary