UNITED NATIONS: China has led the criticism of the U.S. for vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, as the outgoing Biden administration blocked international action aimed at halting Israel’s war with Hamas.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court in The Hague said on Thursday that it had issued warrants for the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (also known as Mohammed Deif) and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
Israel said in August it had killed Deif in an air strike in Gaza earlier this year, although Hamas has never confirmed this.
The ICC said Israel’s acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction was not required.
Both Netanyahu and Gallant will be liable for arrest if they travel to any of the more than 120 countries that are party to the ICC.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were a “mark of shame” for the court. Israel’s main opposition leader Yair Lapid also denounced the court’s move, calling it “a reward for terrorism”.
At the UN on Wednesday its 15-member council voted on a resolution put forward by 10 non-permanent members that called for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in the 13-month conflict and separately demanded the release of hostages.
Only the U.S. voted against, using its veto as a permanent council member to block the resolution, the fifth time it has done so on resolutions regarding the conflict.
Ambassador Robert Wood, Alternate Representative of the U.S. for Special Political Affairs in the UN, raises his hands to veto the draft resolution.
Robert Wood, deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN, said Washington had made clear it would only support a resolution that explicitly calls for the immediate release of hostages as part of a ceasefire.
“A durable end to the war must come with the release of the hostages. These two urgent goals are inextricably linked. This resolution abandoned that necessity, and for that reason, the United States could not support it,” he said.
Wood said the U.S. had sought compromise, but the text of the proposed resolution would have sent a “dangerous message” to Palestinian militant group Hamas that “there’s no need to come back to the negotiating table.”
Israel’s UN ambassador Danny Danon said ahead of the vote the text was not a resolution for peace but “a resolution for appeasement” of Hamas.
“History will remember who stood with the hostages and who abandoned them,” Danon said.
But there was swift condemnation in the international community.
China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong told the chamber: “It is incomprehensible that for the past year or so, the United States has been so insistent in rendering the Council incapable of playing its role, leading to its paralysis. The U.S. has claimed to be conducting parallel diplomatic efforts and has repeatedly promised that progress would be made soon in the negotiations.
“It is incomprehensible that to date, the so-called diplomatic negotiations have been going in circles. Why is Israel allowed to continue its military operations while constantly putting forth new conditions for negotiations?”
Fu said the repeated use of veto by the U.S. “has reduced the authority of the Security Council and international law to an all-time low.”
