The United Nations General Assembly will vote soon on a draft resolution that calls on countries to take steps to force Israel to comply with international law and the UN Charter in its war on Hamas. The text also calls for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave, alongside other sweeping demands in the multipage document.
The draft seen by PassBlue might change as negotiations continue until the scheduled vote on Thursday, but it currently stresses Israel’s obligations under international law, among other aspects, to ensure the immediate and “unhindered” delivery of humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, “to all Palestinian civilians as well as fuel, equipment, shelter and access to clean water. . . in coordination with the United Nations.”
The document, sponsored by Spain, is a far more comprehensive version of the failed draft resolution that the United States vetoed in the Security Council on June 4.
For the first time since the Israeli military operation started in Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, this new draft text of the General Assembly includes strong language about Israel’s role as the occupying power in Gaza. It stresses, for example, “the need for accountability in order to ensure Israel’s respect of international law obligations.”
Richard Gowan, the UN director at the International Crisis Group think tank in New York City, said the renewed push by Security Council members to pressure the US through the June 4 vote on the Gaza draft resolution signals that countries no longer fear possible retaliation by President Donald Trump if they take formal action related to the Palestinian enclave.
“In the last few weeks, we saw the mood shift, we saw the spell break,” Gowan said during a press briefing on June 10, adding that the General Assembly vote on Thursday is expected to garner support from most of the 193 member states. A “no” vote each by the US and Israel is a given.
If adopted, the nonbinding resolution will mark one of the most powerful collective statements by the Assembly since the hostilities between Israel and Hamas started 20 months ago. The draft references the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures from January, March and May 2024 warning of a “real and imminent risk” of genocide in Gaza.
The draft also draws on Security Council Resolution 2735 (2024), which demands that both parties in the war carry out an immediate ceasefire, release all hostages and exchange Palestinian prisoners as well as Israeli forces fully withdrawing from Gaza.
Max Rodenbeck, the project director on Israel and Palestine at the International Crisis Group, painted a bleak picture of the situation in the region and the consequences for Israel. While the war might be entering its “final chapter,” he said — declaring that Israel may be winning — Palestinians will be gradually displaced as Gaza becomes more uninhabitable.
At the beginning of the January ceasefire in the enclave, a widely cited map developed by Corey Scher, a Ph.D. student at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said that 60 percent of the residences in Gaza had been destroyed in the war. Israel has carried out more aggressive ground military operations in the strip since it broke the ceasefire in March. The intensified destruction will mean further decimation of such infrastructure as schools and hospitals.
However, while the end of the war will not mean better protections for Palestinian civilians, including the possibility of the much-talked-about two-state solution, Crisis Group experts believe there might be repercussions for Israel as well, who until recently has enjoyed overwhelming support from its Western allies.
In the short term, for example, Israel could lose access to the remaining hostages as it intensifies combat in Gaza and could face a higher political price from potential sanctions.
“This is not an outcome that is particularly good for anyone,” Rodenbeck said. “Israel has won every war, but Israel has also lost almost every piece afterwards [because] of its failure to be magnanimous in victory.”
This week, Britain, Norway, Australia, Canada and New Zealand imposed sanctions on two far-right Israeli politicians and on Israelis who are seizing Palestinian property in the occupied West Bank. The sanctions reflect a growing appetite by large Western powers to penalize the Israeli government for its operations in both Gaza and the West Bank. Yet, experts say these punishments are not enough to force Israel to change its actions in the occupied territories.
“Sanctions are not a tool that can change behavior in and of themselves,” Michael Wahid Hanna, the US program director for the Crisis Group, said. “It’s symbolically important, it’s convenient. It’s an easy step to take. It can’t substitute for a real policy shift that tries to change behavior, it won’t happen through this tool in and of itself.”
On June 4, Dorothy Shea, the US interim chief of mission, said before casting the lone negative vote against the one-page draft text in the Security Council, “The United States has been clear: we would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza.”
The veto was the fifth draft resolution that the US killed on the Israel-Hamas war, and the first by the Trump administration. The US, under both Presidents Biden and Trump, says it cannot support a Council resolution that fails to condemn Hamas and recognize Israel’s right to defend itself. Yet, the US vetoed a draft text in the Council early in the war that included such language. (The current General Assembly draft text does not name Hamas but references “all parties” in the conflict.)
Relatedly, the Assembly is holding a two-state solution conference on Israel and Palestine from June 17 to 20 at UN headquarters in New York City. A US State Department spokesperson told PassBlue that “the conference would be counterproductive, and we will encourage others not to participate.” Israel is also likely to be a no-show, diplomats say. The meeting, led by France and Saudi Arabia, is meant to increase the number of countries who recognize Palestine as a state, but so far, Britain and France have reportedly weakened their commitment to that agenda.
Rodenbeck noted that “there is nothing left to create a state with” while Hanna added that “it’s all probably too little, too late.”
PassBlue reported how the US requested that the Security Council draft resolution endorse the controversial Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid hubs, but the other members said no. These private, militarized sites began operating fitfully in the enclave about a week ago, and the UN refuses to participate in them as it still tries to bring its own supplies of food into the enclave despite Israel constantly stalling approvals.
The hubs offer small boxes of food like dried lentils, flour, salt and beans to thousands of Gazans, who often trek for hours in the dead of night to arrive before dawn at the GHF sites despite being shot at indiscriminately by Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, stationed at the perimeters. Sometimes, Gazans end up leaving the hubs empty-handed and return the next day, praying for better luck.
One media report said that Israeli gunfire killed at least 17 Palestinians on Tuesday, for example, as thousands of displaced people approached GHF hubs. A spokesperson for the organization told PassBlue that the shootings occurred “several hours before any site opened” and directed further questions to the IDF, saying the foundation had no contacts there.
This week, outside the US mission to the UN, on First Avenue, a small group of American veterans and activists protested Israel’s interception of the Madleen yacht sailing in international waters with climate activist Greta Thunberg and a crew onboard to bring aid to Gaza. The project is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
The groups picketing the US mission — Veterans for Peace, World Beyond War and others — did so at the UK mission as well, insisting on the “full humanitarian aid under UN authority, no US weapons to Israel, and an immediate end to the genocide.”
Kathy Kelly, a protester, called on Britain to take responsibility for the Madleen, which carried the country’s flag, and to pressure Israel to release Thunberg and the others taken from the ship on Monday.
“They boarded the ship, they arrested the captain and the crew, and those people are now in an Israeli jail,” Kelly said. “They’re not criminals. What’s criminal is the refusal of countries all around the world to implement international law and stop Israel’s siege and assault against Palestinians, including children.”
On Tuesday, Thunberg was deported by Israel to France. The others from the Madleen reportedly remain in Israel or have also been deported.
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Damilola Banjo is an award-winning staff reporter for PassBlue who has covered a wide range of topics, from Africa-centered stories to gender equality to UN peacekeeping and US-UN relations. She also oversees all video production for PassBlue. She was a Dag Hammarskjold fellow in 2023 and a Pulitzer Center postgraduate fellow in 2021. She was part of the BBC Africa team that produced the Emmy-nominated documentary, “Sex for Grades.” In addition, she worked for WFAE, an NPR affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. Banjo has a master’s of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and an undergraduate degree from the University of Ibadan in Nigeria.
