©Reuters. United Nations Security Council members stand silent in honor of the victims of the attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert hall on the day of the vote on a Gaza resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan which leads to
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By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants and the release of all hostages after the United States abstained from the vote.
The remaining 14 members of the council voted in favor of the resolution proposed by the body’s 10 elected members. After the vote, applause broke out in the council chamber.
“The Palestinian people have suffered greatly. This bloodbath has continued for too long. It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath before it is too late,” Algerian UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council after the vote.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the United States’ failure to veto the resolution represents a “clear retreat” from its previous position and would harm Israel’s war efforts and attempt to free more than 130 hostages still held by Hamas .
“Our vote does not, and I repeat, does not represent a change in our policy,” White House spokesman John Kirby (NYSE:) told reporters. “Nothing has changed in our politics. Nothing.”
After the UN vote, Netanyahu canceled a visit to Washington by a high-level delegation that was supposed to discuss a planned Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where around 1.5 million have sought refuge of people.
Washington had been against the word ceasefire at the start of the nearly six-month war in the Gaza Strip and had used its veto power, ally Israel, in retaliation against Hamas for an October 7 attack that Israel said had killed 1,200 people.
But as famine looms in Gaza and amid growing global pressure for a truce in the war that Palestinian health authorities say has killed some 32,000 people, the United States abstained on Monday to allow the Security Council to call for a ceasefire immediate for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. , which ends in two weeks.
Hamas welcomed the Security Council resolution, saying in a statement that it “affirms the willingness to engage in immediate prisoner exchanges on both sides.”
IMMINENT FAMINE
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the US fully supports “some of the critical objectives of this non-binding resolution”, but added that Washington does not agree with all of the text, which does not condemn Hamas .
“We believe it is important for the Council to speak openly and make clear that any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,” he told the Council after the vote. “A ceasefire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage and so we must put pressure on Hamas to do just that.”
The resolution calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. Israel says Hamas took 253 hostages in the Oct. 7 attack.
“It was the Hamas massacre that started this war,” said Israeli UN ambassador Gilad Erdan. “The resolution just voted on makes it seem as if the war started on its own… Israel did not start this war, nor did Israel want this war.”
The resolution also “underlines the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance and strengthen the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip and reiterates the call to eliminate all barriers to the provision of large-scale humanitarian assistance.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged Israel to remove all obstacles to aid to Gaza and allow convoys from the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) to enter the northern coastal enclave.
Famine is imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza and could spread across the enclave by July, according to a United Nations-backed report released last week by a global authority on food security.
The United States vetoed three draft council resolutions on the war in Gaza. He had also previously abstained twice, allowing the Council to adopt resolutions that sought to increase aid to Gaza and called for a prolonged pause in fighting.
Russia and China also vetoed two US draft resolutions on the conflict – in October and on Friday.
“This must be a turning point,” an emotional Palestinian UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, told the Security Council on Monday after the vote. “This must lead to saving lives on the ground.”