Israel pounds Rafah amid cease-fire calls
UN chief urges Tel Aviv to allow aid into Gaza
UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations Security Council on Monday demanded an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages after the United States abstained from the vote.
The other 14 council members voted for the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected members of the body.
“The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. This bloodbath has continued for far too long. It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath, before it is too late,” Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council after the vote.
Israeli army radio reported shortly before the council meeting started that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would cancel a planned delegation to Washington if the U.S. did not veto the resolution.
Washington had been averse to the word cease-fire earlier in the nearly sixmonth-old war in the Gaza Strip and had used its veto power shield U.S. ally Israel as it retaliated against Hamas for an Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people. Israel also says Hamas took 253 hostages during the attack.
But amid growing global pressure for a truce in the war that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, the U.S. abstained from the vote on Monday to allow the Security Council to demand an immediate cease-fire for the month of Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks.
“The United States support for these objectives is not simply rhetorical. We’re working around the clock to make them real on the ground through diplomacy, because we know that it is only through diplomacy that we can push this agenda forward,” said U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
“A cease-fire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage and so we must put pressure on Hamas to do just that,” she said.
Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. abstained from the vote because it did not agree with everything in the resolution and the text did not include a condemnation of Hamas.
The Security Council resolution also “emphasizes the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip and reiterates its demand for the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale.”
The U.S. has vetoed three draft council resolutions on the war in Gaza. It has also previously abstained twice, allowing the council to adopt resolutions that aimed to boost aid to Gaza and called for extended pauses in fighting.
Russia and China have also vetoed two U.S. drafted resolutions on the conflict – in October and on Friday.
Guterres: Let aid into Gaza
Israel’s military carried out new airstrikes in Gaza and laid siege to two hospitals on Monday, despite what the U.N. chief called a growing international consensus to tell Israel a ceasefire is needed.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also issued a new call to Israel to allow aid in to the northern Gaza Strip to combat starvation after more than five months of war and not to carry out a threatened assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah.
“It is absolutely essential to have a massive supply of humanitarian aid now,” Guterres said in Jordan.
Rafah, the last refuge for about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population after many people arrived in search of shelter after being displaced by fighting elsewhere, came under heavy fire in the latest Israeli attacks, witnesses said.
Palestinian medics said 30 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours in Rafah, where Israel is planning a ground assault to eliminate what it says are Palestinian militant cells there.
Dozens of Palestinians took part in rallies and attended funerals early on Monday after an Israeli airstrike killed 18 Palestinians in one house in Deir Al-Balah in central Gaza, medics and witnesses said.
Israeli forces were also besieging Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in the southern city of Khan Younis, Palestinian witnesses said, a week after entering Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, the main hospital in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said it had detained 500 people affiliated with Hamas and the allied Islamic Jihad and located weapons in the Al Shifa area. The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said hundreds of patients and medical staff had been detained there.
Israel’s military also said 20 militants had been “eliminated” in fighting and airstrikes around Al Amal Hospital over the previous 24 hours.
Reuters has been unable to access Gaza’s contested hospital areas and verify accounts by either side.
Palestinian cross-border rocket attacks have tapered off in recent weeks as Israeli forces advanced through areas in the Gaza Strip from where missiles have previously been fired.
Israel: No Palestinian statehood
Israel told four European countries on Monday that their plan to work toward recognition of a Palestinian state constituted a “prize for terrorism” that would reduce the chances of a negotiated resolution to the conflict between the neighbors.
Spain said Friday that, in the name of Middle East peace, it had agreed with Ireland, Malta and Slovenia to take steps toward recognizing statehood declared by the Palestinians in the Israelioccupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
“Recognition of a Palestinian state following the October 7 massacre sends a message to Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organizations that murderous terror attacks on Israelis will be reciprocated with political gestures to the Palestinians,” Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on X.