As the UN Security Council passed a binding U.S.-sponsored resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza on Monday, Israel continued to slaughter Palestinians in Gaza — despite U.S. officials’ insistence that the ceasefire is backed by Israeli officials.
The resolution passed 14 to 0. Russia abstained from the vote because its representative said it is unclear whether or not Israel has actually signed on to the resolution, with conflicting accounts from U.S. and Israeli officials on Israel’s stance.
The proposal is similar to previous ones introduced by the U.S., with the first phase consisting of “immediate, full, and complete ceasefire” with the exchange of some Palestinians who are being imprisoned by Israel and some Israeli hostages, including women, the elderly and the wounded, according to a UN report on the vote.
In the second phase, there would be a permanent ceasefire, a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the release of all other Israeli hostages. The third and final phase calls for a “major multi-year reconstruction plan” for Gaza — a process that experts say will take many years, if not decades, due to Israel’s deliberate destruction of the majority of infrastructure in Gaza.
Hamas officials have said that they accept the resolution and look forward to negotiating details like how many Palestinian prisoners will be released, Reuters reports, citing senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri. Zuhri added that it is up to the U.S. to decide whether or not it will put proper pressure on Israel to abide by the plan.
“The U.S. administration is facing a real test to carry out its commitments in compelling the occupation to immediately end the war in an implementation of the UN Security Council resolution,” he said.
The Chinese ambassador to the Security Council also expressed concern that the resolution, which China voted in favor of, would not be enforced — much like previous UN resolutions regarding Israel’s genocide that have not been implemented.
Indeed, Israel has shown very little interest in agreeing to or implementing a ceasefire proposal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been insistent throughout the genocide that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza until it eliminates Hamas — a goal experts say is essentially impossible. It is also a goal that Israel has indicated countless times includes wiping out all possibility of a Palestinian state, as well as the brutal slaughter of Palestinian civilians; in a post on social media on Tuesday, Israel essentially explicitly said that Palestinian civilians are legitimate military targets.
In response to President Joe Biden’s announcement of the U.S.’s three-phase ceasefire agreement at the end of May, Netanyahu said that a ceasefire was a “non-starter” until Gaza “no longer poses a threat to Israel.”
Israeli officials reiterated that stance in speaking about the Security Council resolution passed on Tuesday. Israel’s representative to the Security Council, Reut Shapir Ben Naftaly, claimed that Israel’s goal remains unchanged and that it aims “to bring all our hostages back home and to dismantle Hamas’s capabilities … and ensure that Gaza does not pose a threat to Israel in the future.”
“As we have echoed several times in this very chamber, once these goals are met, the war will end,” she continued.
Despite these statements, U.S. officials have insisted that it is Hamas officials who are resisting the proposal. On Monday, President Joe Biden said on social media that Hamas “says it wants a ceasefire,” but that they must “prove they mean it.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that Netanyahu himself agrees to the plan, in contrast to Israel’s public statements about the resolution.
Even Biden — who has provided nearly unconditional support to Israel’s genocide — has implied that Israel is determined to continue its atrocities against Palestinians. In an interview last week, he said that there is “every reason” to believe that Netanyahu is prolonging the incursion for political reasons, even as he misleadingly blamed Hamas for obstructing ceasefire deals.
Further undermining U.S. officials’ claims that Israel agrees to the ceasefire resolution is the fact that Israel has continued shelling Gaza and killing Palestinians in the time around and after the vote.
The Gaza health ministry reported on Tuesday that Israel had killed 40 Palestinians and wounded 120 in the previous 24 hours, while video posted online showed Israel shelling tents in a supposed safe zone in central Gaza on Tuesday.
Al Jazeera reported that in the time immediately surrounding the vote, Israel killed at least 11 people, including children, in attacks across northern and central Gaza, and killed four more Palestinians in a bombing of Gaza City. Further, Israeli forces raided multiple neighborhoods in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday night.
Israel has also continued its near-total blockade of humanitarian aid in Gaza, manufacturing a deadly famine across the region, humanitarian groups have said.
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