US ready to back delayed UN Gaza aid resolution as humanitarian situation worsens

As negotiations continue on a vote at the UN Security Council on the Israel-Gaza conflict, ITV News explains what the main bodies involved actually do.

The US has said it is ready to back a much-delayed UN Security Council vote on a watered-down resolution to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza.

The vote on the draft text is now expected on Friday amid a worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The United States, which has veto power, has pushed back against calls for an immediate ceasefire as well as giving the UN sole responsibility for inspecting aid deliveries. Israel insists it needs to be able to screen goods entering Gaza.

Gaza’s 2.2 million population is in a food crisis or worse and 576,600 are at the “catastrophic” starvation level, according to report released on Thursday by 23 UN and humanitarian agencies.

Only a small trickle of supplies is getting into Gaza, and the UN World Food Program has said 90% of the population is regularly going without food for a full day.

Nearly 20,000 Palestinians - nearly 1% of the territory's population - have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, since the war started. During the October 7 attack, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 240 hostages back to Gaza.

Gadi Haggai, 73, who was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz, was confirmed to have died, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum said.

Mr Haggai and his wife Judi were shot by militants while out for their regular morning walk in the fields and vineyards of the kibbutz and taken to Gaza.

His body is still in Gaza.

Israel’s military says 137 of its soldiers have been killed in the Gaza ground offensive. It says it has killed thousands of Hamas militants, including about 2,000 in the past three weeks, but it has not presented any evidence to back up the claim.

Over 11 weeks, nearly 85% of Gaza's people and leveled swaths of the territory.

US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United States backs the new text, which had been significantly changed, and if it is put to a vote Washington will support it.

A call for “the urgent suspension of hostilities to allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and for urgent steps towards a sustainable cessation of hostilities" was taken out of the new draft.

Instead, it calls “for urgent steps to immediately allow safe and unhindered humanitarian access, and also for creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.”

The steps are not defined, but diplomats said if adopted this would mark the council’s first reference to a cessation of hostilities.

US president Joe Biden has warned Israel is losing international support because of the “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza.

US officials have repeatedly expressed concern about the large number of Palestinian civilian deaths. This week, US defence secretary Lloyd Austin pressed Israel to transition from high intensity operations to targeted operations aimed at killing Hamas leaders, destroying tunnels and rescuing hostages.

In another major change, the U.S.-backed draft resolution eliminates the condemnation of “all violations of international humanitarian law, including all indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects, all violence and hostilities against civilians, and all acts of terrorism.”

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