The resolution, introduced by Algeria on behalf of the Arab group of U.N. members, “would send the wrong message to Hamas,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, and “would actually give them something that they have asked for without requiring them to do something in return.”
Instead, Thomas-Greenfield called on council members to support an alternative U.S. resolution, still in draft form, demanding that Israel — along with agreeing to a “temporary ceasefire as soon as practicable” to enable the release of hostages — refrain from a major ground offensive into Rafah and take “immediate measures” to allow the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid into the enclave through additional land and sea entry points.
So far, U.S. appeals directly to Israel on all of those points have met with little positive response, at least in public. President Biden, under pressure at home and abroad to use U.S. leverage more effectively, has become increasingly direct, calling Israeli military tactics “over the top,” even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not bow to international demands until a total victory over Hamas is achieved.
The United States stood alone in opposing the call for an immediate cease-fire and asking for more negotiating time. With the exception of Britain, which abstained, the rest of the council’s 15 members voted in favor of the Algerian resolution, which also demanded the release of all hostages.
In both angry and sorrowful speeches, ambassadors from one nation after another indicated they had had enough.
“The human toll and the humanitarian situation in Gaza is intolerable, and Israeli operations must stop,” French Ambassador Nicolas de Rivière said after voting in favor of the resolution.
“It is not that the Security Council does not have an overriding consensus, but rather it is the exercise of the veto by the United States that has stifled the council consensus,” said China’s envoy, Zhang Jun.
The veto was a “stark example of double standards,” said Egyptian Ambassador Osama Mahmoud Abdel Khalek Mahmoud, whose government, along with Qatar and the United States, is part of the hostage negotiation effort between Israel and Hamas. Mahmoud expressed “disappointment and frustration as a result of the obstruction of the U.S.”
Far from impeding the discussion on a hostage release, he said, the vetoed resolution would have created “conditions conducive for its success.”
The negotiations themselves, initially expected to move swiftly after a proposed “framework” was presented to Israel and Hamas nearly three weeks ago, have not been going well. “We made some good progress [the] last few weeks … but the last few days have not been progressing as expected,” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Saturday at the Munich Security Conference.
If agreements on outstanding issues can be reached “in the next few days,” he said, “I believe we can see a deal happen very soon. … But the past few days are not really very promising.”
On Tuesday, the Biden administration dispatched one of its biggest guns on the issue — National Security Council Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk — to Cairo and Tel Aviv “specifically to see if we can get this hostage deal in place,” council spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “We are at a very delicate time right now, with these discussions going on.”
The United States is striving to expand on an earlier, week-long pause in the Israel-Gaza war in November, which led…
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