Hamas welcomes
Security Council resolution
Hamas issued a statement on Monday welcoming a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, saying it 'affirms readiness to engage in immediate prisoner swaps on both sides'.
"The Palestinian people has suffered greatly. This bloodbath has continued for far too long. It is our obligation to put an end to this bloodbath, before it is too late," Algeria's UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama told the council after the vote.
Israeli army radio reported shortly before the council meeting started that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would cancel a planned delegation to Washington if the US did not veto the resolution.
Washington had been averse to the word ceasefire earlier in the nearly six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip and had used its veto power shield US ally Israel as it retaliated against Hamas for an Oct. 7 attack that Israel says killed 1,200 people.
But amid growing global pressure for a truce in the war that has killed more than 32,000 Palestinians, the US abstained from the vote on Monday to allow the Security Council to demand an immediate ceasefire for the month of Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends in two weeks.
Netanyahu cancels
delegation to Washington
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he would not send a delegation as planned to Washington after the United States did not veto a UN Security Council proposal calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Netanyahu, according to a statement from his office, said that Washington's failure to veto the proposal was a "clear retreat" from its previous position, and would hurt war efforts against Hamas in Gaza as well as efforts to release over 130 hostages.
"In light of the change in the American position, Prime Minister Netanyahu decided the delegation would not leave," his office said.
The high-level delegation was due to travel to Washington to discuss a planned Israeli military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
"The United States support for these objectives is not simply rhetorical. We're working around the clock to make them real on the ground through diplomacy, because we know that it is only through diplomacy that we can push this agenda forward," said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
"A ceasefire can begin immediately with the release of the first hostage and so we must put pressure on Hamas to do just that," she said.
Thomas-Greenfield said the US abstained from the vote because it did not agree with everything in the resolution and the text did not include a condemnation of Hamas.
The Security Council resolution also "emphasises the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip and reiterates its demand for the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale."
The US has vetoed three draft council resolutions on the war in Gaza. It has also previously abstained twice, allowing the council to adopt resolutions that aimed to boost aid to Gaza and called for extended pauses in fighting.
Russia and China have also vetoed two US drafted resolutions on the conflict - in October and on Friday.
