Haley calls Security Council response to Gazan volleys ‘outrageous’
WASHINGTON – Nikki Haley, US President Donald Trump’s envoy to the UN, tore into the organization on Wednesday for what she characterized as a lackadaisical response to the firing of over 70 rockets at Israel from Gaza the day before.
Claiming a double standard, and questioning why Israeli military actions against Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization, rile world opinion more so than the reverse, Haley called on the Security Council to condemn the attack as an act of terrorism.
The Gazan volleys were “a clear escalation of violence,” Haley said, accusing the council of being “disconnected” to the realities on the ground. “The people of Gaza do not need protection from an external force. The people of Gaza need protection from Hamas.”
The US had called an emergency session of the council for Wednesday over the rocket firings, hoping to secure a statement of condemnation. But Kuwait, a non-permanent member, blocked the move, and has instead drafted a resolution calling for “international protection” for the Palestinian people.
“It is outrageous for the Security Council to fail to condemn Hamas rockets attacks against Israeli civilians,” Haley said. “You would think no one would want to side with Hamas over its rocket launches. But the statement was blocked.
“Apparently some council members didn’t think Hamas launching rockets qualified as terrorism,” she continued, but “the United States begs to differ.”
While representatives from Britain, France and the UN “unequivocally condemned” the rocket attacks, Paris’s envoy also linked Tuesday’s volleys with Palestinian protests that took place earlier in the month, around the US opening of its embassy in Jerusalem and demanding a “right of return” for Palestinians to Green Line Israel. The IDF response to those riots on the Israeli border resulted in dozens of Palestinians deaths and hundreds more wounded.
“There is a real risk of a cycle of violence which the players in question could quickly lose control of,” France’s Ambassador François Delattre told the council. “This situation is sadly predictable.”
Speaking to the council from Jerusalem, the UN’s special coordinator for Middle East peace, Nickolay Mladenov, warned that Israel and Gaza remain on “the brink of war,” and said that Hamas’s rocket firings “cannot be justified under any circumstances.”
He noted that, while Israel’s “retaliatory” strikes against Hamas did not result in any civilian infrastructure damage in Gaza, Hamas’s own rockets damaged power lines through which Israel supplies electricity to the Strip.