Israel-Palestine conflict: US vetoes UNSC resolution urging humanitarian pause

The United States vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Wednesday urging for a “humanitarian pause” in the raging Israel-Palestine conflict.

Twelve out of 15 Council members voted in favour of the resolution put forward by Brazil and negotiated over several days, while Russia and the United Kingdom abstained.

The United States was the only vote against, but as one of the body’s five permanent members its vote counts as a veto, AFP reported.

“The United States is disappointed this resolution made no mention of Israel’s rights of self defense,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote.

The vote comes after the Security Council on Monday rejected a Russian resolution condemning spiraling violence in the Middle East.

According to Al-Jazeera, The killing of nearly 500 people in an Israeli air strike on Tuesday is also high on the agenda. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called the attack an ‘unjustifiable tragedy’.

Israel’s strike on Gaza hospital

For tens of thousands of families in Gaza, hospitals became a refuge from seemingly endless Israeli shelling. Then came the strike Tuesday night on Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza, which the health ministry said killed at least 500 people.

Residents who have been told to flee the north of the Palestinian territory had packed the courtyards and corridors of the territory’s overwhelmed hospitals in the belief they were a safe haven from the Israeli bombardments.

The Hamas government in Gaza termed the attack a “war crime”. Meanwhile, the health ministry said that “the hospital was housing hundreds of sick and wounded, and people forcibly displaced from their homes” because of other Israeli attacks.

Over 3,500 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip since the war erupted on October 7. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed.