The UN Security Council will vote on the Israel-Hamas war today after the Gaza hospital blast
A resolution proposed by Brazil that requests humanitarian pauses in the hostilities between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in order to enable assistance access to the Gaza Strip will now be voted on by the UN Security Council on Wednesday.
Following that, the council is anticipated to tackle the Tuesday hospital explosion in Gaza that left hundreds dead, at the request of the United Arab Emirates and Russia, according to diplomats.
Palestinian U.N. representative Riyad Mansour demanded an immediate ceasefire and attributed the “massacre” at the hospital on Israeli soldiers. In a statement, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said that the extremist Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization was accountable. The accusations have been refuted by Islamic Jihad. Reuters was unable to independently confirm who was in charge of the explosion.
The vote by the 15-member council on the Brazilian draft was originally scheduled for Monday, but it was postponed by 24 hours to provide additional time for negotiations. As President Joe Biden is visiting Israel on Wednesday, the US then lobbied for a further postponement.
It was uncertain if the United States, a veto-wielding country that often protects its friend Israel from Security Council action, would consent to the resolution’s passage. The draft document also implores Israel to revoke its directive for citizens in Gaza to transfer to the southern part of the Palestinian territory without specifically identifying the country.
Nearly half of Gaza’s population, or 1.1 million people, were forced to leave last week as Israel prepared for a ground invasion in reprisal for the biggest Hamas attack on civilians in Israel’s 75-year history.
The Brazilian proposal is largely an expanded version of a Russian proposal that was rejected in a vote on Monday, with the exception that it expressly denounces “the terrorist attacks by Hamas.” It requests humanitarian pauses in the fighting to enable assistance passage to Gaza rather than asking for a ceasefire.
Israel has completely besieged Gaza and bombarded it with the heaviest torpedoes ever. After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 and claimed captives while killing 1,300 people, it has promised to eradicate the organization. There have been 3,000 Palestinian deaths.
