UN Security Council stalemate prolongs pain
THE US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, landed in Tel Aviv yesterday to attend the Gaza war talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Blinken arrived from Cairo for the last stop of his latest Middle East tour and is expected to press for a truce in Gaza, before a key UN Security Council vote on a US draft resolution on the need for an “immediate” ceasefire.
He also planned to speak to the Israeli government about humanitarian aid distribution in the Palestinian territory and to urge Israel not to launch a ground operation in Rafah.
The US, Israel’s main backer, announced earlier that it had submitted a draft resolution for an “immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal” to the Security Council for a vote, after repeatedly using its veto power to block other similarly worded resolutions, including a one from A lgeria.
However, Russia and China vetoed the US-led draft resolution yesterday, with Moscow accusing Washington of a “hypocritical spectacle” that does not pressure Israel.
Russia and China exercised their vetoes. Algeria also voted against it and Guyana abstained. The other 11 Security Council members voted in favour, including France and Britain.
“The American product is exceedingly politicised, with the sole purpose being to play to voters and throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a ceasefire in Gaza,” Russia’s ambassador, Vasily Nebenzia, said, adding that the US resolution would “ensure the impunity of Israel, whose crimes are not even assessed in the draft”.
Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza this week centred on Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest, with Israel also vowing to launch a new ground assault in overcrowded Rafah in the south.
Israel said its Mossad chief would head back to Qatar yesterday for more talks with US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.
The talks are focused on securing a truce agreement, hinged on the release of hostages held by Hamas militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody and the delivery of more aid to Gaza, where famine is threatening its 2.4 million people.
Speaking in Cairo on Thursday, Blinken said “gaps are narrowing” and that the US was “continuing to push for an agreement in Doha”.
He warned that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where around 1.5 million people are hemmed in by the Egyptian border, would be “a mistake”.
“There is no place for the civilians amassed in Rafah to get out of harm’s way,” Blinken said.
“There is a better way to deal with the ongoing threat posed by Hamas.”
Israel’s relentless bombardment of Gaza has continued despite renewed diplomatic efforts.
The military said it had killed more than 140 Hamas fighters and arrested more than 350 since the start of its operation in and around Al-Shifa Hospital on Monday. It said militants were hiding out at the vast hospital complex and civilians had not been harmed.
Hamas said the attack on an area crowded with patients and people seeking refuge was a crime.
The bloodiest-ever Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s attack on October 7 that resulted in about 1160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures. Militants also seized about 250 hostages. Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel has vowed to eliminate Hamas and its response has killed at least 31 988 people the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says.
Gaza’s infrastructure has largely collapsed and UN agencies are warning that the battered territory’s population is on the brink of famine.
A UN panel of experts said this week that children in Gaza were “starving to death”.
Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to escape fighting elsewhere, is the last urban centre to be so far spared an Israeli ground assault. |