The US draft resolution at the UN Security Council calling for an 'immediate and sustained ceasefire' in Gaza has been vetoed by China and Russia.
The resolution called for a 'pause' in Israel's offensive that could last up to six weeks while humanitarian aid was distributed — but did not directly demand from Israel to stop its operation in the Palestinian enclave.
"The vast majority of this council voted in favor of this resolution, but unfortunately Russia and China decided to exercise its veto," US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council.
But Russia's UN ambassador Vassily Nebenzia dismissed Thomas-Greenfield's assertions and urged Security Council members not to vote for the "extremely politicized" US motion.
He said the US draft was just a ploy to let Israel go ahead with its planned military operation on Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip, where 2.3 million residents have been driven by the Israel Defense Forces assaults in the north.
"This would free the hands of Israel and it would result in all of Gaza and its entire population, having to face destruction, devastation, or expulsion," Nebenzia told the meeting.
Nebenzia said the US had failed in the past to fulfill its promise to end the conflict. He stressed that the draft did not include a call for a ceasefire, accusing Washington of trying to "sell a product" to the UNSC by integrating the word 'imperative', while the text was "deliberately misleading the international community."
But the US resolution also signalled a departure from the Biden administration’s previous stance in an apparent split with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration, urging it to halt its five-month-long conflict with Hamas as the humanitarian conditions of Gazans deteriorate.
The Russian envoy stressed that the conflict could have ended before now if the US had genuinly strived for peace. Washington had only belatedly acknowledged the need for a ceasefire at the expense of over 30,000 dead Palestinians.
The US delegation has repeatedly employed its Security Council veto to protect Israel from critical resolutions. Since the start of the Gaza conflict, Thomas-Greenfield has blocked draft resolutions from Brazil (October 18, 2023), the UAE (December 8, 2023) and Algeria (February 20, 2024), which called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Russia also submitted a ceasefire resolution in late October last year, condemning Hamas' October 7 armed excursion from the besieged strip but also criticizing Israel's “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians in Gaza. That motion was failed to win majority support.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu's government has repeated its vow to destroy the Hamas movement, with a final offensive on Rafah.
“If you leave four battalions in Rafah, you’ve lost the war, and Israel is not going to lose the war,” Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer told a podcast on Thursday. “With or without the United States, we are not going to do it. We have no choice,” he insisted.
According to Palestinian health authorities, around 32,000 people, mainly women and children, have been killed by Israel's bombing of Gaza — over 70 percent of whom are women and children.