The decision to convene the general assembly is expected to be announced on Thursday by Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, its current president and former foreign minister of Nicaragua, Al Jazeera's Ghida Fakhry said in New York on Wednesday.
Any resolution passed by the 192-member general assembly on the conflict would not be binding but the move would carry political and symbolic weight and provide all nations with a chance to voice their views on the crisis for the record, she adds.
Amid continued diplomatic activity, Egyptian officials said on Wednesday that an Israeli team would travel to Cairo for talks on an Egyptian-French ceasefire initiative but it was not clear if members of the Palestinian group Hamas and the Palestinian Authority would attend.
The Egyptian-French initiative would see an immediate temporary truce to allow aid into Gaza, negotiations and measures to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.
On Wednesday Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said at the UN that the US considered a ceasefire "necessary" and that she had impressed on Israeli and Arab ministers "the importance of moving [the French-Egyptian] initiative forward".
She reiterated her belief, however, that any ceasefire "will not allow a return to the status quo".
Libya, currently the only Arab nation serving as a non-permanent member of the security council, had been urging council members to back its resolution, while other members of the council had reportedly favoured issuing a non-binding "presidential statement".
But the US had blocked an earlier Libyan draft resolution that Washington and its allies saw as anti-Israel.
Meanwhile the French government had initially said that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had accepted the Egypt-France initiative to end the crisis, but Israel and Hamas have said the proposal was still under discussion.
Initiative
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said on Wednesday regarding the proposal: "We welcome the French-Egyptian initiative. We want to see it succeed," adding that talks would "continue on the basis of that initiative".
"A sustainable calm in the south will be based upon the total absence of hostile fire from Gaza into Israel and an effective arms embargo on Hamas that enjoys international support," he said.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Beirut, Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, said "the [Hamas] movement is now discussing its stance to the Egyptian initiative, keeping in mind that there are, in principle, a number of reservations on this initiative".