US vetoes UN resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire, world leaders reacts

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US vetoes UN resolution calling for Gaza ceasefire, world leaders reacts

Shawdesh Desk:

The United States (US) has vetoed a United Nations Security Council demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the war between Israel and Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.

Thirteen Security Council members voted in favour of a brief draft resolution, put forward by the United Arab Emirates on Friday, while the United Kingdom abstained.

The vote came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made a rare move on Wednesday to formally warn the 15-member council of a global threat from the two-month-long war, reports Al Jazeera and news agencies.

“While the US strongly supports a durable peace in which both Israel and Palestine can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate ceasefire. This would only plant the seeds for the next war, because Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” said Robert Wood, deputy US ambassador to the UN.

The US and Israel oppose a ceasefire because they believe it would only benefit Hamas. Washington instead supports pauses in fighting to protect civilians and allow the release of hostages taken by Hamas in a deadly October 7 attack on Israel.

A seven-day pause – that saw Hamas release some hostages and an increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza – ended on December 1.

After several failed attempts to take action, the Security Council last month called for pauses in fighting to allow aid access to Gaza, which Guterres on Friday described as a “spiralling humanitarian nightmare”.

The US favours its own diplomacy, rather than Security Council action, to win the release of more hostages and press Israel to better protect civilians in its assault on Gaza, which it launched after the Hamas attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people. Gaza’s Health Ministry says more than 17,480 people have been killed in the Israeli assault.

The vote came after Guterres deployed rarely-used Article 99 of the UN Charter to bring to the council’s attention “any matter which, in his opinion, may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”.

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays said that Guterres’s invocation of Article 99 of the UN charter was extremely rare.

“He [Guterres] has not done it before. In fact, formally invoking this hasn’t happened since 1989,” said Bays, adding that it wasn’t invoked in Syria, Yemen or Ukraine.

Meanwhile, world leaders, international rights groups and United Nations officials have criticised the United States for vetoing a UN resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and failing to halt the war that has killed more than 17,400 Palestinians and about 1,100 people in Israel since October 7.

Here are some of the reactions:

Palestine

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said it was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace”.

Palestine’s UN envoy Riyad Mansour told the UNSC that the result of the vote was “disastrous”. “If you are against the destruction and displacement of the Palestinian people you must stand against this war. And if you support it then you are enabling this destruction and displacement regardless of your intentions … Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance. Every single one of them is sacred, worth saving.”

Hamas strongly condemned the US veto, saying it considers Washington’s move “unethical and inhumane”. “The US obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said in a statement.

Israel

Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan did not address the UNSC after the vote, but in a statement said: “A ceasefire will be possible only with the return of all the hostages and the destruction of Hamas.”

Amnesty International

Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary general, said on X that the US veto “displays a callous disregard for civilian suffering in the face of a staggering death toll”. The statement also said that Washington “has brazenly wielded and weaponized its veto to strongarm the UN Security Council, further undermining its credibility and ability to live up to its mandate to maintain international peace and security”.
China

Permanent representative to the UN, Zhang Jun, told the council: “Condoning the continuation of fighting while claiming to care about the lives and safety of people in Gaza is self-contradictory. Condoning the continuation of fighting while advocating for the prevention of the spillover effects of the conflict is self-deceiving. Condoning the continuation of fighting while making references to the protection of women and children and human rights is hypocritical. All these once again show us what double standards are.”

Russia

Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, said: “Our colleagues from the USA have literally before our eyes issued a death sentence to thousands if not tens of thousands more civilians in Palestine and Israel.”