The UN Security Council on Friday adopted a resolution calling for a major increase in aid to desperate civilians in the Gaza Strip, ending nearly a week of intense diplomatic wrangling for the US to not block the measure.

The vote was 13-0 in favour of the resolution, with the US and Russia abstaining. The final version of the measure did not call for a ceasefire and was unlikely to affect the fighting in Gaza, where about 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes and ground operations.

The resolution was adopted after Council diplomats repeatedly delayed the vote this week and reworked the measure in intense negotiations involving the governments of Egypt, the UAE and the US, aimed at winning support from the White House and its allies in the Israeli government.

The US had previously vetoed two resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas. That put Washington increasingly at odds with other major powers and with the Arab world.

Russia proposed an amendment that would have partially reverted to an earlier version of the resolution, including a pause in the fighting, but the US vetoed that amendment.

Friday’s resolution, put forward by the UAE, the only Arab country currently on the 15-member council, calls on the warring parties in Gaza to allow the use of “all available routes” into Gaza for aid deliveries, according to a draft that was circulated before the vote.

The draft also dropped a call for the “urgent suspension of hostilities” from an earlier version, instead calling for “urgent steps” to allow unhindered humanitarian access and the creation of “conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

“We know this is not a perfect text, we know only a ceasefire will stop the suffering,” said Lana Nusseibeh, the ambassador for the UAE who has been leading the negotiations.

Evacuate, Gazans told

The Israeli military on Friday instructed residents in the central Gaza Strip to move farther south immediately, as its troops continued their slow advance through the enclave and expectations of an imminent victory over Hamas appeared dim.

The call to evacuate in Al Bureij — an area in central Gaza where Israel has not previously focused its offensive — comes as the military has been operating in the northern Gaza Strip and engaging in intense fighting in recent weeks in and around the southern city of Khan Younis. “Our forces continue to intensify ground operations in northern and southern Gaza,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said.

Israel says it has achieved operational control in some areas in the north, but the grinding progress is leading some prominent Israeli military analysts and political commentators to point to a widening gap between the reality on the ground and the rhetoric of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

New York Times News Service