The United States on Friday wielded its U.N. Security Council veto to shield its ally (Israel) from a global demand for a ceasefire.
Almost all other Security Council members and dozens of other nations backed the UN Resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza.
The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining. France and Japan were among those supporting the call for a cease-fire.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood called the resolution “imbalanced” and criticized the council after the vote for its failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, or to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself. He declared that halting military action would allow Hamas to continue to rule Gaza and “only plant the seeds for the next war.”
“Hamas has no desire to see a durable peace, to see a two-state solution,” Wood said before the vote. “For that reason, while the United States strongly supports a durable peace, in which both Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and security, we do not support calls for an immediate cease-fire.”
Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 17,400 people in Gaza — 70% of them women and children — and wounded more than 46,000, according to the Palestinian territory’s Health Ministry, which says many others are trapped under rubble.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the United States’ veto of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza made it complicit in what he described as war crimes against Palestinians.
Abbas also said he held the US responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and the elderly in the Gaza Strip, a statement released by the presidency said.
Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Dmitry Polyansky called the vote “one of the darkest days in the history of the Middle East” and accused the United States of issuing “a death sentence to thousands, if not tens of thousands more civilians in Palestine and Israel, including women and children.”
He said “history will judge Washington’s actions” in the face of what he called a “merciless Israeli bloodbath.”
