Israel/Palestine I Security Council vote on new resolutions | United Nations

Security Council to vote on new resolutions over Gaza crisis, proposed by Russia and the United States, calling for a humanitarian pause in Gaza. China and Russia today (25 Oct) vetoed a draft resolution sponsored by the United States, while a second Russian-backed resolution failed to adopt having failed to get sufficient votes in favour, deepening the Security Council’s deadlock over any unified response to address the crisis in Gaza and Israel. Speaking before the vote US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “Russia has offered up yet another resolution in bad faith and this Council should not stand for it. Instead, we should come together around the resolution proposed by the United States – a resolution that not only includes, but also builds on, many elements of the text Brazil put forward last week.” For his part, Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said, “the US, trying to tamper the sharp criticism against it for using its veto - and this is from the international community - is trying to push through a kind of new draft plumped, full of politicized, irrelevant, and very dubious provisions. I’d like to point out that no normal consultative process on it was conducted in the Council, despite the fact that our American colleague has just assured us of the very opposite.” Ten members of the Council voted for the US drafted resolution and three against (China, Russia and UAE), with two abstentions (Brazil and Mozambique). Speaking after the vote, China’s Ambassador Zhang Jun said, “it’s worth being vigilant that the draft departs from the spirit of previous UN resolutions and embeds the dangerous logic of confrontation of civilizations and the justification of war and the use of force. If the draft had been adopted, it would have completely dashed the prospect for the realization of the two-state solution and plunged the Palestinian and Israeli peoples into a vicious cycle of hatred and confrontation.” A ‘no’ vote from any one of the five permanent members of the Council stops action on any measure put before it. The body’s permanent members are China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. A second draft resolution, led by Russia, was not adopted as it failed to secure sufficient number of votes in favour. Four Council members voted in favour (China, Gabon, Russia and UAE), two against (UK and US), and nine abstained (Albania, Brazil, Ecuador, France, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland). For a resolution to be adopted, it must be supported by at least nine members of the Council. The similarly worded resolutions would have called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” or “humanitarian pause” to enable safe delivery of aid for desperate civilians. Both drafts condemned the terror attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians of 7 October and urged action to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where fuel is due to run out for hospitals and other crucial services, in a matter of hours, according to UN agencies on the ground. Key differences in the text included a specific mention in the US-backed proposal of States’ inherent right to self-defence, and a call in the Russian-led one for the immediate cancellation by Israeli forces of the evacuation order for civilians to head into southern Gaza.