The United States signaled late Thursday that it may support, after weeks of negotiations, a resolution by the United Nations Security Council calling for an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Before they vote on the resolution, though, diplomats in Turtle Bay — perhaps too young, or, alternatively, too old, to remember — calling for the creation of a new United Nations bureaucracy to speed up the aid would do well to remember that they have been down this road before — under the now-infamous name of oil-for-food. 

The corruption-laden scheme, created in the mid-1990s, charged the UN with delivering humanitarian goods to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. “We should never attempt such a program again,” the late UN chief, Kofi Annan, vowed after the graft-laden program went down in flames.

Yet America is intensely negotiating a Security Council approval of a new mechanism to be charged “with responsibility for facilitating, coordinating, monitoring, and verifying” the “humanitarian nature of all humanitarian relief consignments to Gaza.”

“I’m not saying how we would vote,” the American ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas Greenfield, told reporters late Thursday, following a week-long vote postponement that led some to suspect Washington would rather have no resolution at all. President Biden, however, considers himself UN-friendly and would rather avoid using America’s veto twice since October. 

Originally designed by the United Arab Emirates as a demand for a Gaza cease-fire, the proposal currently deals almost exclusively with humanitarian aid, which could create “the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The UN’s backroom haggling indicates a delicate diplomatic dance between Washington, Abu Dhabi, and, to a lesser degree, Jerusalem. 

The Israelis have no use for the UN. This year the General Assembly approved 14 anti-Israel resolutions — double the number of such condemnations aimed at the rest of the world. The Israelis were mostly kept out of the negotiations over the aid resolution, a diplomat involved in the talks tells the Sun.

Meanwhile, despite public outcry over Gaza suffering, Abu Dhabi’s diplomatic relations with Israel remain intact. At Turtle Bay, however, the United Arab Emirates represents the Arab bloc, and it has to rely on Arab consensus.

Beyond the UN, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are widely envisioned as future contributors to Gaza’s post-war rehabilitation. When Mr. Biden advocates that a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority rule in Gaza after the war, he also speaks of help from Arab countries, hoping that Saudi Arabia and the UAE would replace Hamas-favoring Qatar as Gaza benefactor. 

“The Gulfies don’t like to be treated as the West’s ATM,” a UN diplomat tells the Sun. So Israel is now signaling it favors Saudi and Emirati involvement in post-war Palestinian affairs, as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, wrote Thursday in an op-ed for the Saudi-owned Elaph newspaper. 

“Beyond ensuring the security of our citizens,” Mr. Hanegbi writes, “there will need to be a moderate Palestinian governing body that enjoys broad support and legitimacy. It’s not for us to decide who this will be.” 

Bridging the gap between Messrs. Biden and Netanyahu over the future presence of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza, Mr. Hanegbi writes that a reformed Palestinian leadership would oppose terrorism and avoid educating children for violence. Such a transformation would “require much work and the assistance of the international community and regional neighbors,” he writes. 

Needing to lure the Gulf states in, America and Israel would rather avoid a public spat with them. Washington is also sensitive to the prospect of a UAE diplomatic failure in the last days of its security council membership. After several days of intense negotiations over each comma, it decided to kick the can down the road.

Despite all the amendments, the resolution is still mostly unrealistic. Even bureaucracy-loving UN officials are leery of getting too deep into the Gaza inspection business.

The proposed new mechanism is doomed to fail even if it avoids resembling the oil-for-food fiasco. While Israel’s interests are often overlooked at the UN, it is currently the most powerful force in Gaza and it will be hard-pressed to transfer goods inspection to the hands of the UN. 

A “humanitarian convoy filled with life-saving food has crossed from Jordan into Gaza for the first time since conflict broke out in the Middle East,” the official UN X account approvingly noted Thursday. “There’s a country that separates Gaza and Jordan. It’s called Israel,” its UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, countered. “You seem to only remember Israel’s existence when you can falsely demonize and condemn us.” 

Israel has indeed approved a large number of humanitarian deliveries to Gaza in recent days. Yet, a recent delivery from the UAE contained hand gliders as an aerial accompaniment for the goods entering the strip. 

The UN would have likely let the gliders in, but Israel remembers all too well that similar devices marked the onset of the October 7 Hamas attack. It politely asked the UAE to take the gliders back.