Russia and China on Friday vetoed a U.S. resolution at the United Nations Security Council that called for “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” as part of a deal in Gaza, rejecting a measure that included some of Washington’s strongest language since the start of the war.
The U.S.-backed resolution reflected the Biden administration’s growing frustration with Israel’s conduct in the war, and had been intended to put pressure on Israel not to attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are sheltering.
But international divisions, including over Washington’s own use of its veto power in the Council and its refusal to call for a permanent cease-fire, appeared to doom the resolution on Friday.
Eleven members voted in favor of the resolution, but three nations, including two permanent members with veto power, Russia and China, voted against it. Algeria also voted against the measure and Guyana abstained.
After the vote, the U.S. ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, defended the resolution, saying it was brought forward “in good faith after consulting with all Council members and after multiple rounds of edits.”
She said Russia and China vetoed the resolution for two reasons: They had refused to condemn Hamas, and they “simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States because it would rather see us fail than to see this Council succeed.”
Ms. Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. draft would have put the Security Council’s weight behind diplomatic efforts “to secure an immediate and sustained cease-fire as part of a deal that leads to the release of all hostages that will allow much more humanitarian aid to get into Gaza.”
Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, had denounced the U.S.-backed measure before the vote, calling it a “hypocritical initiative” and “a diluted formulation” regarding a cease-fire.
“To save the lives of peaceful Palestinians, this is not enough,” he said. The draft, he asserted, was written with U.S. political interests in mind, to “ensure the impunity of Israel” and to undermine the authority of the Council.
He urged Council members to vote against the resolution, saying, “We cannot allow the Security Council to become an instrument in advancement of Washington’s destructive policy in the Middle East.”
The United States had vetoed three previous resolutions demanding a stop to fighting in Gaza, arguing that the measures could disrupt hostage negotiations and staunchly defending Israel’s right to defend itself after the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7. In each of those earlier Security Council votes, the United States was the only vote against the resolutions. Russia and Britain abstained from the first vote, in October, and Britain abstained from the votes in December and February.
But as the death toll has mounted in Gaza, where the health authorities say more than 30,000 people have been killed, and as hunger and disease worsen around the territory, President Biden and other U.S. officials have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s prime minister and his handling of the war. In his State of the Union address this month, Mr. Biden called for the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to let more aid into Gaza and do more to protect civilians.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who met with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in Tel Aviv on Friday, has said that an immediate cease-fire would allow for the release of hostages and a “surge” in humanitarian aid to alleviate the acute suffering among the territory’s 2.2 million civilians.
The urging of an “immediate” cease-fire was a shift from a draft Security Council resolution that the United States circulated last month, which had called for a temporary cease-fire “as soon as practicable.”
A delegation of mediators from Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the United States were meeting in Doha, Qatar’s capital, on Friday to “advance the release of hostages” still being held in Gaza, according to the office of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. A U.S. official confirmed that William Burns, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, would travel to Qatar on Friday for negotiations.
In December, the Security Council adopted a resolution that called for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses and corridors” to allow aid to reach civilians in Gaza. But that measure stopped short of demanding a cease-fire. The United States and Russia abstained from that vote.
