https://www.cuttingedge.org/newsletters/index.html
Tensions
between the United States and Israel were exposed on Monday when
Washington stood aside and allowed the UN Security Council to pass a
resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
The US decision to abstain on the vote prompted Israel’s Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cancel a scheduled trip to the US by
two of his top advisers, two Israeli officials said.
The US had previously vetoed similar resolutions calling for a
ceasefire. Its position evolved last week when on Friday, it put
forward a ceasefire resolution tied tied to the release of hostages.
That resolution fell when it was vetoed
by Russia and China. The US abstention on Monday’s vote allowed
the latest resolution to pass, when the other 14 members of the
15-strong council voted yes.
The US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda
Thomas-Greenfield said that while the latest resolution included
edits requested by the US, Washington could not vote yes because it
“did not agree with everything.”
“A ceasefire could have come about months ago if Hamas had been
willing to release hostages,” the ambassador said, calling on
member states and the Security Council to demand that Hamas “accepts
the deal on the table.”
“Any ceasefire must come with the release of all hostages,” she
added
The resolution, put forward by the 10 non-permanent members of the
Security Council, demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of
Ramadan, the immediate and unconditional release of hostages and “the
urgent need to expand the flow” of aid into Gaza.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said a failure to implement
the resolution would be “unforgivable.” “The Security Council
just approved a long-awaited resolution on Gaza, demanding an
immediate ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of
all hostages. This resolution must be implemented. Failure would be
unforgivable,” Guterres wrote on X, previously known as Twitter.
Both Hamas and the Palestinian authority welcomed the resolution,
while Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan criticised
the Security Council for passing a measure that called for a
ceasefire “without conditioning it on the release of the hostages.”
“It undermines the efforts to secure their release,” he said
at the United Nations.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X his country would
not abide by the resolution.
“The state of Israel will not cease fire,” Katz said. “We
will destroy Hamas and continue to fight until the last of the
hostages returns home.”
The Biden administration made the choice to abstain rather
than veto the UN Security Council resolution over the weekend
when they were able to work on changing certain parts of the
resolution’s text, according to a senior administration official.
Another source familiar with the matter said that the US had
planned to veto, but there were intensive diplomatic efforts to find
a compromise that put them in a position to abstain.
Initially the text demanded a permanent ceasefire and did not
mention negotiations to release hostages, and the US was able to push
for the text to change so that it referenced a lasting ceasefire and
included language about the ongoing hostage release efforts, the
official said. For those reasons, the US believed that the resolution
was consistent with US policy, the official said, a sentiment echoed
by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Because the final text does not have key language we view
as essential, notably a condemnation of Hamas, we could not support
it. This failure to condemn Hamas is particularly difficult to
understand coming days after the world once again witnessed the
horrific acts terrorist groups commit,” Blinken said in a
statement.
The UN vote on Monday came as tensions grow over a looming Israeli
military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. The US has
been calling on Israel to explain how it will protect the 1.4 million
Palestinians seeking refuge there ahead of the expected incursion,
which the US said “would be a mistake.”
The UN Ambassador of the Palestinian Territories, Riyad
Mansour, said the decision was a vote “for life to
prevail.”
It has taken six months for the Security Council to demand an
immediate ceasefire, and “over 100,000 killed and maimed, two
million displaced, and famine for this council to immediately demand
an immediate ceasefire,” Riyad said.
A US Visit Cancelled
Israel’s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Ron
Dermer, a member of the war cabinet and close adviser to Netanyahu,
had been scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday night to discuss
the offensive and US alternatives, but the visit was cancelled after
the vote.
National Security spokesman John Kirby offered a fuller
response to Netanyahu’s decision to cancel the delegation, saying
the US was disappointed by the decision to cancel the trip.
“We’re very disappointed that they will not be coming to
Washington, DC, to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them
about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah,” he
said.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller called the
cancellation “surprising and unfortunate.”
One US official told CNN that scrapping the visit was an
overreaction that most likely reflects Netanyahu’s own domestic
political concerns. Netanyahu did not communicate directly with Biden
over the decision, and the President has no plans to phone Netanyahu
to discuss the matter, the official said.
Separately, Israel agreed to a US proposal on a prisoner-hostage
deal, according to CNN analyst Barak Ravid’s reporting on the
recent round of talks in Doha. The reported deal could see the
release of around 700 Palestinian prisoners, among them 100 serving
life sentences for killing Israeli nationals, in exchange for
the release of 40 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
However, Hamas said more issues remain unresolved beyond the release
of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Hamas senior
officials Basem Naeim told CNN that “Israeli-American media” was
adding pressure on the talks.
“For us, the negotiations are not only centric around the
prisoner exchange deal,” he said.
“Israel has not agreed to any of (Hamas) requests related
to a complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of all forces from the Gaza
Strip, even in stages, and the return of all displaced people to
their homes,” Naeim said.
As this resolution has now into international law, what will
follow from Netanyahu will be interesting to observe. Given that the
United States abstained from the vote, will they now cease supplying
weapons to Israel, thus preventing Israel from inflicting further
acts of genocide against Palestinians? Furthermore, the failure of
Israel to comply will leave the Jews isolated and alone on the world
stage and place them in the same position as the Jews of Europe at the time of the Holocaust.
To prevent any further irreparable damage to both Israel and (more
importantly) Gaza, it is imperative to engage in constructive
dialogue and seek peaceful resolutions, which is something the
pig-headed Netanyahu refuses to participate in. It is clear that this
man is a mass murderer and will go it alone, irrespective of any UN
resolutions—all to Israel's inevitable detriment.
Blessings