This Monday, Israel considered North America’s abstention from passing a UN Security Council resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire between Tel Aviv and Hamas during Ramadan “to be detrimental to the war effort and the release of the hostages.”
“This position undermines both the war effort and efforts to free the hostages because it gives Hamas hope that international pressure will allow them to achieve a ceasefire without releasing our hostages,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin’s office wrote in a press release. Netanyahu.
In this sense, and since the United States of America (USA) did not exercise its veto power (as a permanent member of the UN Security Council), Netanyahu decided to cancel the planned visit to Washington of a high-level Israeli delegation.
Netanyahu accused the US of “backsliding” from a “principled position” that he said allowed the vote to proceed without conditioning a ceasefire on the release of hostages held by Hamas.
The Israeli delegation was to present White House (US Presidency) officials with plans for a ground invasion of the strategic city of Rafah, located in the south of the Gaza Strip and near the border with Egypt, where more than a million Palestinians live. live civilians seeking refuge from the ongoing war.
The UN Security Council today approved a resolution proposed by the body’s 10 elected and non-permanent member states that demands an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip during the holy month of Ramadan. There were 14 votes in favor of the text, with one abstention from the United States.
After another five months of war between Israel and the Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, this is the first time the Security Council has been able to approve a ceasefire resolution in the Palestinian enclave, after several projects were vetoed in succession.
The most recent came on Friday when a resolution written by the United States that “ordered an immediate and lasting ceasefire” in Gaza was rejected by countries such as Russia and China (also permanent members and with veto power) who objected. to the wording used in the text, namely because it did not “demand” a cessation of hostilities.
The resolution now approved “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan, respected by all parties, leading to a lasting and sustainable ceasefire.”
Ramadan began on March 10 and will end on April 9, meaning the ceasefire demand will last only two weeks, although the draft allows for a longer period.
It also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as guarantees of humanitarian access to meet their medical and other humanitarian needs.
On the other hand, it also requires parties to the conflict to comply with their obligations under international law “in relation to all persons whom they detain.”
The resolution was introduced by the 10 elected and non-permanent member states of the Security Council: Algeria, Ecuador, Guyana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, South Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Switzerland.
Since the start of the war, the Council has only managed to pass two resolutions, and neither of them dealt with a ceasefire, but rather with a humanitarian issue.
However, the results are meager: aid to Gaza remains largely insufficient and famine is imminent in the enclave, while more than 32,000 people have died in the territory controlled by Hamas since 2007.
The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas was sparked by the Palestinian Islamist group’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people and took more than two hundred hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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