US vetoes UN security council push to call for ceasefire in Gaza

Today's message is clear to the Israeli occupying power -- you may continue your genocide ... with complete impunity. In this Chamber, you enjoy immunity,

Bendjama said

This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. These are its war objectives. This is what the absence of a ceasefire is allowing it to continue doing,

he said, calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the region

It is a sad day for the Security Council, for the United Nations and the international community as a whole,

Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council members

To the Palestinian people, it is another clear message -- while the overwhelming majority of the world stands in solidarity with your plight, others remain indifferent to your suffering,

he added

The resolution would have sent a dangerous message to Hamas that there was no need to come back to the negotiating table,

he said

I think it’s clear that the political rationale here is not actually to find a path to peace. That it’s not about saving innocent lives, and it’s not about ending the continued violence that is being perpetrated against Palestinian civilians,

Tariq Habash, a Biden appointee who resigned in protest of the administration’s Gaza policy, told HuffPost

There has been a purposeful effort over the course of the last year to channel reporting into this mechanism — this mechanism which, by the way, doesn’t have any direct hooks into policy or law — and then just to use this to shut down that reporting and to let things go nowhere,

said Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in protest over Gaza and founded A New Policy with Habash

The idea that somehow engaging in those discussions about the minutiae that we know are not going to lead anywhere outweighs the fact that the administration is doing all it can, not only to continue to send lethal arms to Israel, but to minimize any possible domestic opposition to that,

Paul told HuffPost

Frankly, it does continuing damage to the Democratic Party’s own brand,

he continued

Once again, the US used its veto to ensure impunity for Israel as its forces continue to commit crimes against Palestinians in Gaza,

Human Rights Watch said

We regret that the council could have incorporated compromise language the UK put forward to bridge the existing gaps ... With that language, this resolution should have been adopted,

Wood, the US envoy, said following the vote

It is deeply regretted that due to the use of the veto, this council has once again failed to uphold its responsibility to maintain international peace and security,

Malta's UN Ambassador Vanessa Frazier said after the vote failed

History will remember who stood with the hostages and who abandoned them,

Danon said

How many more people have to die before they wake up from their pretend slumber?"

he asked

It represented the bare minimum of what is needed to begin to address the desperate situation on the ground,

she said

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

France still has two hostages in Gaza, and we deeply regret that the Security Council was not able to formulate this demand,

he said

We made clear throughout negotiations that we could not support an unconditional ceasefire that failed to release the hostages,

Robert Wood, the deputy US envoy to the UN, said during the session in New York

This was true a year ago; this is even more true today. A ceasefire doesn’t resolve everything but it is the first step towards resolving anything,

Bamya said

Matthew Miller (spokesperson)state Department spokesperson

That fact that they continue to parrot over and over again that they’re ‘working tirelessly’ for a ceasefire while simultaneously blocking efforts to reach a ceasefire and sending lethal weapons to the Israeli government … is a sick joke,

Miller told Al Jazeera