TANZANIA – The United States on Wednesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in the war in Gaza because it was not linked to an immediate release of hostages taken captive by Hamas militants in Israel in October 2023.
The council voted overwhelmingly in favor of the resolution — 14 of its 15 members voted “yes” including U.S. allies Britain and France — but it was doomed by the veto.
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U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood said the United States worked for weeks to avoid a veto of the resolution sponsored by the council’s 10 elected members, and expressed regret that compromise language was not accepted.
“We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional cease-fire that failed to release the hostages,” he said. “Hamas would have seen it as a vindication of its cynical strategy to hope and pray the international community forgets about the fate of more than 100 hostages from more than 20 member states who have been held for 410 days.”
The resolution that was put to a vote “demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent cease-fire to be respected by all parties, and further reiterates its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”
The emotional response to the veto by the Palestinian deputy U.N. ambassador, Majed Bamya, reflected the widespread anger and disappointment at the failure of the U.N.’s most powerful body to demand an end to the more than 13-month war, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and left most of the territory in ruins.
The absence of a cease-fire is allowing a “full-fledged Israeli assault against the Palestinian people and the Palestinian land” to continue, Bamya told the council. “A cease-fire will allow to save lives — all lives. This was true a year ago. This is even more true today.”
Stressing the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, Bamya asked, “Do they have the right to kill, and the only right we have is to die?”
He told council members: “You are witnessing the attempt to annihilate a nation, destroy a nation.”
Israel’s U.N. ambassador, Danny Danon, countered that the resolution “was not a path to peace, it was a road map to more terror, more suffering and more bloodshed.”
He thanked the United States, Israel's closest ally, “for exercising its veto, for standing on the side of morality and justice, for refusing to abandon the hostages and their families.”
The reason the council was meeting and “the pain that the people are suffering (is) because of Hamas,” Danon said, stressing that the only future for Gaza is without the Palestinian militant group.
In a statement, Hamas strongly condemned the veto, claiming the United States again demonstrated “its direct involvement in the aggression against our people, acting as an accomplice in the killing of children and women and the complete destruction of civilian life in Gaza.”
“We demand the U.S. to stop this clumsy hostile policy if it truly seeks to end wars and achieve security and stability in the region, as we heard from the upcoming administration,” Hamas added, a reference to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to end the war in Gaza.
The Security Council has adopted several resolutions on Gaza, including for a cease-fire during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and demanding humanitarian access. The United States as well as Russia and China have vetoed several previous resolutions on the war.
The council in June adopted its first resolution on a cease-fire plan aimed at ending the war between Israel and Hamas. That U.S.-sponsored resolution welcomed a cease-fire proposal announced by President Joe Biden that the United States said Israel had accepted. It called on Hamas to accept the three-phase plan, but the war goes on.
The Palestinian deputy ambassador put the blame on Israel, saying, “It is pretty clear that Israel had never an intention to accept a cease-fire, and has found every reason not to have a cease-fire.”
The 10 elected council members said in a statement read by Guyana’s U.N. ambassador, Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, after the vote that they all supported the June resolution “with the expectation that a cease-fire deal would have been agreed and implemented swiftly.”
But months later, the 10 elected members decided a new resolution should go further and make an unequivocal demand for an unconditional cease-fire not limited to any time period.
Notwithstanding the U.S. veto, the elected members underscored that the war in Gaza must end immediately, hostages must be released immediately, humanitarian aid must be delivered everywhere in Gaza and civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected.
“Our collective efforts to end the hostilities will not stop,” they said.
Algeria’s U.N. ambassador, Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative on the council, said the message to Israel after the veto is: “You may continue your genocide. You may continue your collective punishment of the Palestinian people with complete impunity. In this chamber, you enjoy immunity."
But he vowed that the elected members will return soon with an even stronger resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable — and they will not stop until the council takes action.
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Matthew Lee in Washington and Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed to this report.