UN Security Council to vote on condemning Hamas, attacks on civilians in Gaza war

Draft resolution sponsored by Brazil slams terror group’s violence, urges humanitarian ceasefire, but final wording yet to be released ahead of Wednesday session

Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour, background right, addresses members of the UN Security Council at the United Nations headquarters, New York, October 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour, background right, addresses members of the UN Security Council at the United Nations headquarters, New York, October 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

The UN Security Council scheduled a Wednesday vote on a resolution that, at least initially, condemns “the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas” on Israel as well as all violence against civilians while calling for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver aid to millions in Gaza.

But negotiations on the wording of the draft resolution sponsored by Brazil continued throughout Tuesday, and the final version to be voted on had not been released by late Tuesday.

The vote follows the council’s rejection Monday evening of a Russian-drafted resolution that condemned violence and terrorism against civilians and called for a “humanitarian cease-fire” but made no mention of the Hamas terror group or its massacres inside Israel on October 7.

Russia has proposed two amendments to the Brazil resolution. One calls for a “humanitarian cease-fire.” The other would condemn indiscriminate attacks on civilians and assaults on “civilian objects” in Gaza like hospitals and schools that deprive people of the means to survive.

Brazil holds the Security Council presidency this month and its UN mission said the vote would be followed by an emergency meeting to discuss Tuesday’s huge explosion and fire at a Gaza City hospital packed with patients, relatives, and Palestinians seeking shelter.  The Hamas-run health ministry said at least 500 died but later amended the figure to 200-300..

Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and China called for the emergency session, at which UN political chief Rosemary DiCarlo and UN Mideast envoy Tor Wennesland were to brief council members.

People stand over bodies of Palestinians killed in a strike on the Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza after they were transported to Al-Shifa hospital, on October 17, 2023. (Dawood NEMER / AFP)

Israel and the Palestinians accused each other of being responsible for the hospital carnage. Hamas said it was from an Israeli airstrike. Israel blamed a misfired rocket by the Palestinian terror group Islamic Jihad, with several videos circling appearing to show a failed rocket launch in Gaza at the time and location of the blast.

The IDF said the damage of the blast was inconsistent with what would have been caused by an airstrike, which it says would have left a crater and not a burning parking lot and shrapnel-pocked roofs. Islamic Jihad denied any involvement.

Hospitals and their grounds have been seen as safe havens for Gazans made homeless or displaced by the bombing, as they have been relatively spared from strikes.

The IDF says it does not target hospitals, and Israel has accused Islamic Jihad before of causing the deaths of Palestinians with rockets that fall short in Gaza.

Israel is 11 days into a war with Hamas following the terror group’s October 7 massacre, which saw at least 1,500 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing over 1,300 people and seizing at least 199 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.

The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians — men, women, children, and the elderly. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists, in what Biden has highlighted as “the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

File: Israeli soldiers walk past houses destroyed by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri on the Gaza border, October 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

The divided Security Council has been even more polarized since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and whether its five veto-wielding permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France — would support the Brazil resolution or abstain in the vote remained to be seen.

To be adopted, a resolution needs at least nine of the 15 council members to vote “yes” as well as no veto by a permanent member.

The council vote was taking place amid frantic diplomatic efforts to prevent the Israeli-Hamas conflict from spreading. US President Joe Biden was on a lightning trip to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to prevent the war’s expansion in the region and to open corridors to deliver aid to Gazans.

After the hospital blast, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas backed out of a planned meeting in Jordan with Biden, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and King Abdullah II of Jordan, leading the Jordanians to cancel the meeting.

The 22-member Arab Group at the United Nations expressed “outrage” at the hospital deaths and called for an immediate ceasefire to avoid further Palestinian casualties, the opening of a corridor to safely deliver aid to millions in Gaza, and the prevention of any forced evacuation of people from the territory.

Egypt’s UN ambassador, Osama Mahmoud, told reporters that a summit will take place Saturday in Cairo as scheduled with regional leaders and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The five permanent Security Council nations are also invited, he said.

Mahmoud said the summit will address the humanitarian crisis sparked by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how to achieve a ceasefire, and whether “any serious attempt to have a political horizon” exists to tackle the issues blocking an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

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