The United States has once again unilaterally vetoed a draft resolution by the United Nations Security Council that called for an immediate, permanent cease-fire in Gaza — a move that comes as the Biden administration spends its last months in office continuing to sell the weapons Israel is using to destroy the Palestinian territory.
The Security Council in New York voted 14-1 on Wednesday in favor of the resolution, but the veto blocked the council from adopting it due to the U.S.’s status as a permanent member.
In addition to demanding a cease-fire, the resolution would’ve demanded the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and would have urged Israeli forces to withdraw from the enclave and immediately restore access to humanitarian assistance for Palestinian civilians.
“I think it’s clear that the political rationale here is not actually to find a path to peace. That it’s not about saving innocent lives, and it’s not about ending the continued violence that is being perpetrated against Palestinian civilians,” Tariq Habash, a Biden appointee who resigned in protest of the administration’s Gaza policy, told HuffPost. “If it was, the veto would not have been used.”
That was echoed by Majed Bamya, the deputy permanent observer of the State of Palestine. But U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood argued that by not explicitly linking a cease-fire to the hostages’ release, the resolution would disincentivize Hamas from engaging in peace negotiations.
“We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional cease-fire that failed to release the hostages,” Wood said. “This resolution abandoned that necessity. For that reason, the United States could not support it.”
Michael M. Santiago via Getty Images
Hamas militants launched an attack on Israel in October 2023 that killed about 1,200 people. They also took roughly 250 hostages, about 100 of whom are believed to remain in captivity. Israeli ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday that states who voted for the U.N. resolution had betrayed the remaining hostages, but Bamya argued that the ongoing “full-fledged” military offensive against Palestinians is “about everything except the hostages.”
For more than a year, the Israeli military, using arms supplied by the U.S., has rained bombs on Gaza. The assault is thought to have killed at least 43,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children — a number that experts and medical workers say is a gross undercount — and has displaced the entire population of Gaza and destroyed infrastructure necessary to sustaining life. Israel’s siege has blocked most humanitarian aid, sparking a mass starvation crisis, and Israeli forces have allegedly detained men in torture camps.
All of that has been cause for humanitarian concern as the Israeli military turns to growing hostilities in Lebanon.
After multiple vetoes by the U.S., the Security Council adopted its first resolution on a cease-fire plan for Israel and Gaza in June. In the five months since that vote, the council has “remained idle, remained hand-tied,” according to Bendjama, who vowed that elected member states will come back with a militarily enforceable resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.
“Today’s message is clear. To the Israeli occupying power, first: You may continue your genocide. You may continue your collective punishment of the Palestinian people with complete impunity,” Bendjama said. “In this chamber, you enjoy immunity.”
“To the Palestinian people, another clear message,” he continued. “While the overwhelming majority of the world stands in solidarity with your plight, others remain indifferent to your suffering.”
The veto on the cease-fire resolution comes one day after the Biden administration announced that a U.S.-Israel panel looking into reports of civilian harm in Gaza will meet next month for the first time. The panel was created in response to specific incidents in which Israel killed Palestinian civilians with weapons provided by the United States, according to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
“There has been a purposeful effort over the course of the last year to channel reporting into this mechanism — this mechanism which, by the way, doesn’t have any direct hooks into policy or law — and then just to use this to shut down that reporting and to let things go nowhere,” said Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in protest over Gaza and founded A New Policy with Habash.
The U.S. again crossed its own red line earlier this month. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had warned Israel in October that they will restrict arms transfers if Israel does not materially increase the assistance to Palestinians within 30 days. But despite several humanitarian organizations saying aid had “fallen to an all-time low” in Gaza, the U.S. concluded Nov. 12 that it will continue sending weapons to Israel.
Senate Democrats have pushed back. Lawmakers will vote Wednesday on a first-of-its-kind bill that rejects the Biden administration’s continued weapons shipments to Israel, arguing that the use of those weapons to cause massive civilian casualties is a violation of U.S. and international law.
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A document exclusively obtained by HuffPost Wednesday reveals the Biden administration has been lobbying senators to vote against the bill, and even seems to be endorsing continued fighting.
“The idea that somehow engaging in those discussions about the minutiae that we know are not going to lead anywhere outweighs the fact that the administration is doing all it can, not only to continue to send lethal arms to Israel, but to minimize any possible domestic opposition to that,” Paul told HuffPost.
“Frankly, it does continuing damage to the Democratic Party’s own brand,” he continued. “And if this is the Democratic Party untethered, not having to worry about elections, … it is going to prove very hard for that party to rebuild in any meaningful way.”
