U.S. vetoes widely supported UN resolution demanding Gaza ceasefire

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The United States on Tuesday vetoed an Arab-backed and widely supported UN resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in the embattled Gaza Strip, saying it would interfere with negotiations on a deal to free hostages abducted in Israel.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 13-1 with the United Kingdom abstaining, reflecting the strong support from countries around the globe for ending the more than four-month war, which started when Hamas militants invaded southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. Since then, more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive, according to the Gaza Health Ministry which says the vast majority were women and children.

It was the third U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and came a day after the United States circulated a rival resolution that would support a temporary ceasefire in Gaza linked to the release of all hostages and call for the lifting of all restrictions on the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Virtually every council member – including the United States – expressed serious concern at the impending catastrophe in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where some 1.5 million Palestinians have sought refuge, if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu goes ahead with his plan to evacuate civilians from the city and move Israel’s military offensive to the area bordering Egypt, where Israel says Hamas fighters are hiding.

Before the vote, Algeria’s UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, said: “This resolution stands for truth and humanity standing against the advocates for murder and hatred.”

“A vote in favour of this draft resolution is a support to the Palestinians right to life,” he said. “Conversely, voting against it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted against them.”

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield countered by saying the United States understands the council’s desire for urgent action but believes the resolution would “negatively impact” sensitive negotiations on a hostage deal and pause in fighting for at least six weeks. If that happens, “we can take the time to build a more enduring peace,” she said.

The proposed U.S. resolution, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said, “would do what this text does not – pressure Hamas to take the hostage deal that is on the table and help secure a pause that allows humanitarian assistance to reach Palestinian civilians in desperate need.”

She told reporters later that the Arab draft did not link the release of the hostages to a ceasefire, which would give Hamas a halt to fighting without requiring it to take any action. That would have meant “that the fighting would have continued because without the hostage releases we know that the fighting is going to continue,” she said.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said the word ceasefire is used in the Security Council, the General Assembly and by UN officials “as if it is a silver bullet, a magical solution to all of the region’s problems.”

He called that “an absurd notion,” warning that a ceasefire in Gaza would enable Hamas to rearm and regroup and “their next attempted genocide against Israelis will only be a question of when, not if.” He pointed to Hamas statements vowing to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 “again and again and again until Israel is annihilated.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN ambassador, shot back that the “message given today to Israel with this veto is that it can continue to get away with murder.”

He warned that more babies will be killed and orphaned, more children will die of hunger, cold and disease, more families will be threatened with further forced displacement, and Gaza’s entire 2.3 million population will be left without food, water, medicine and shelter.

And in a sharply critical message to the United States, Israel’s closest ally, Mr. Mansour said: “It means that human lives that could have been saved are instead being forsaken to Israel’s genocidal war machine, deliberately, knowingly, by those who oppose a ceasefire.”

What happens next remains to be seen.

The 22-nation Arab Group could take its resolution to the UN General Assembly, which includes all 193 UN member nations, where it is virtually certain to be approved. But unlike Security Council resolutions, assembly resolutions are not legally binding. Mr. Mansour indicated this is an option under consideration.

Ms. Thomas-Greenfield told the council the United States “will work in earnest in negotiating” on its proposed resolution, leaving time for all council members to comment, “rather than impose an arbitrary deadline for the vote.”

The United States must also defend its veto of the resolution at a General Assembly meeting within 10 days.

The defeated Arab-backed resolution would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to be respected by all parties, which implies an end to the war.

By contrast, the U.S. draft resolution would underscore the Security Council’s support for a temporary ceasefire “as soon as practicable, based on the formula of all hostages being released,” and call for “lifting all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale.”

It is the first time the U.S. has used the word “ceasefire,” as opposed to cessation of hostilities.

The Arab draft would also have demanded the immediate release of all hostages, rejected the forced displacement of Palestinian civilians, called for unhindered humanitarian access throughout Gaza, and reiterated council demands that Israel and Hamas “scrupulously comply” with international law, especially the protection of civilians.

Without naming either party, it would have condemned “all acts of terrorism” and reiterated the council’s “unwavering commitment” to a two-state solution with two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace.

In measures sure to anger Israel – and reinforce differences and tensions between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israel’s Mr. Netanyahu – the U.S. draft resolution reiterates the same unwavering commitment to a two-state solution, which the Israeli leader opposes.

Mr. Biden has repeatedly called on Israel to protect Palestinian civilians, and the draft resolution says Israel’s planned major ground offensive in Rafah “should not proceed under current circumstances.”

And it warns that further displacement of civilians, “including potentially into neighbouring countries,” a reference to Egypt, would have serious implications for regional peace and security.

In another criticism directed at Israel, the U.S. draft “condemns calls by government ministers for the resettlement of Gaza and rejects an attempt at demographic or territorial change in Gaza that would violate international law.”

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, who has sought a ceasefire since mid-October, accused the United States of “duplicitous and hypocritical calls” for the council to wait for diplomacy to produce results on a hostage deal.

“It could not yield any results because the real goal of Washington is not to achieve peace in the Middle East, not to protect civilians, but rather to advance their geopolitical agenda, demanding at any cost for their closest Middle East ally to be shielded,” Mr. Nebenzia told the council, claiming that the U.S. has given “an effective license for Israel to kill Palestinians.”

While this was the third U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, the council has adopted two resolutions on Gaza where the U.S. abstained.

Its first resolution, on Nov. 15, called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to address the escalating crisis for Palestinian civilians during Israel’s aerial and ground attacks. In late November, a seven-day pause led to the release of 120 hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of 200 Palestinian prisoners.

On Dec. 22, the council adopted a watered-down resolution calling for immediately speeding aid deliveries to hungry and desperate civilians in Gaza, but without the original plea for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.

It did call for “creating the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities.” The steps are not defined, but diplomats said it was the council’s first reference to stopping fighting. Because of ongoing fighting and no new humanitarian pause, little aid has gotten into Gaza.

The World Food Program said Tuesday it has paused deliveries of food to isolated northern Gaza because of increasing chaos across the territory, hiking fears of potential starvation. A study by the UN children’s agency warned that one in six children in the north are acutely malnourished.

Entry of aid trucks into the besieged territory has sharply declined by more than half the past two weeks, according to UN figures. Overwhelmed UN and relief workers said intake of trucks and distribution have been crippled by Israeli failure to ensure convoys’ safety amid its bombardment and ground offensive and by a breakdown in security, with hungry Palestinians frequently overwhelming trucks to take food.

The weakening of the aid operation threatens to deepen misery across the territory, where Israel’s air and ground offensive, launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, has killed over 29,000 Palestinians, obliterated entire neighbourhoods and displaced more than 80 per cent of the population of 2.3 million.

Heavy fighting and air strikes have flared in the past two days in areas of northern Gaza that the Israeli military said had been largely cleared of Hamas weeks ago. The military on Tuesday ordered the evacuation of two neighbourhoods on Gaza City’s southern edge, an indication that militants are still putting up stiff resistance.

The north, including Gaza City, has been isolated since Israeli troops first moved into it in late October. Large swaths of the city have been reduced to rubble, but several hundred thousand Palestinians remain largely cut off from aid.

They describe faminelike conditions, in which families limit themselves to one meal a day and often resort to mixing animal and bird fodder with grains to bake bread.

“The situation is beyond your imagination,” said Soad Abu Hussein, a widow and mother of five children sheltering in a school in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Ayman Abu Awad, who lives in Zaytoun, said he eats one meal a day to save whatever he can for his four children.

“People have eaten whatever they find, including animal feed and rotten bread,” he said.

The World Food Program said it was forced to pause aid to the north because of “complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order.”

It said it had first suspended deliveries to the north three weeks ago after a strike hit an aid truck. It tried resuming this week, but convoys on Sunday and Monday faced gunfire and crowds of hungry people stripping goods and beating one driver.

WFP said it was working to resume deliveries as soon as possible. It called for the opening of crossing points for aid directly into northern Gaza from Israel and a better notification system to co-ordinate with the Israeli military.

It warned of a “precipitous slide into hunger and disease,” saying, “People are already dying from hunger-related causes.”

UNICEF official Ted Chaiban said in a statement that Gaza “is poised to witness an explosion in preventable child deaths, which would compound the already unbearable level of child deaths in Gaza.”

The report released Monday by the Global Nutrition Cluster, an aid partnership led by UNICEF, found that in 95 per cent of Gaza’s households, adults were restricting their own food to ensure small children can eat, while 65 per cent of families eat only one meal a day.

More than 90 per cent of children under 5 in Gaza eat two or fewer food groups a day, known as severe food poverty, the report said. A similar percentage are affected by infectious diseases, with 70 per cent experiencing diarrhea in the past two weeks. More than 80 per cent of homes lack clean and safe water.

In Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where most humanitarian aid enters, the acute malnutrition rate is 5 per cent, compared to 15 per cent in northern Gaza. Before the war, the rate across Gaza was less than 1 per cent, the report said.

A UN report in December found that Gaza’s entire population is in a food crisis, with one in four facing starvation.

Soon after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Israel blocked entry of all food, water, fuel, medicine and other supplies into Gaza. Under U.S. pressure, it began to allow a trickle of aid trucks to enter from Egypt at the Rafah crossing, and in December opened one crossing from Israel into southern Gaza, Kerem Shalom.

The trucks have become virtually the sole source of food and other supplies for Gaza’s population. But the average number entering per day has fallen since Feb. 9 to 60 a day from more than 140 daily in January, according to figures from the U.N. office for humanitarian co-ordination, known as OCHA.

Even at its height, U.N. officials said the flow was not enough to sustain the population and was far below the 500 trucks a day entering before the war.

The cause of the drop was not immediately clear. For weeks, right-wing Israeli protesters have held demonstrations to block trucks, saying Gaza’s people should not be given aid. U.N. agencies have also complained that cumbersome Israeli procedures for searching trucks have slowed crossings.

But chaos within Gaza appears to be a major cause.

Moshe Tetro, an official with COGAT, an Israeli military body in charge of civilian Palestinian affairs, said the bottleneck was because the U.N. and other aid groups can’t accept the trucks in Gaza or distribute them to the population. He said more than 450 trucks were waiting on the Palestinian side of Kerem Shalom crossing, but no U.N. staff had come to distribute them.

Eri Kaneko, a spokesperson for OCHA, said the U.N. and other aid groups have not been able to regularly pick up supplies at the crossing points because of “the lack of security and breakdown of law and order.” He said the Israeli military has a responsibility to facilitate distribution within Gaza, and “aid piling up at the crossing is evidence of an absence of this enabling environment.”

In a rare public criticism of Israel, a top U.S. envoy, David Satterfield, said this week that its targeted killings of Gaza police commanders guarding truck convoys have made it “virtually impossible” to distribute the goods safely.

Besides crowds of Palestinians swarming convoys, aid workers say they are hampered by heavy fighting, strikes hitting trucks and Israeli failure to guarantee deliveries’ safety. The U.N. says that from Jan. 1 to Feb. 12, Israel denied access to 51 per cent of its planned aid deliveries to north Gaza.

The war began when Hamas-led militants rampaged across communities in southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. The militants still hold some 130 captives, around a fourth of whom are believed to be dead.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said it had confirmation that Hamas started delivering medications to the hostages, a month after the medications arrived in Gaza under a deal mediated by the Gulf state and France. The deal provides three months’ worth of medication for chronic illnesses for 45 of the hostages, as well as other medicine and vitamins, in exchange for medicines and humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel has vowed to expand its offensive to Rafah, where more than half of the territory’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said Tuesday that the total Palestinian death toll since Oct. 7 had risen to 29,195. The ministry does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its records, but says women and children make up two-thirds of those killed. Over 69,000 Palestinians have been wounded, according to the ministry.

Israel says it has killed over 10,000 Palestinian militants but has provided no evidence for its count. The military blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because the militant group fights in dense residential neighbourhoods. The military says 237 of its soldiers have been killed since the start of the ground offensive in late October.