A Shameful U.S. Veto at the United Nations

The U.S. is destroying what little credibility it has in the region and in many other parts of the world, and it is only going to get worse as this conflict drags on.

The U.S. shamefully vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses in the war in Gaza:

The United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Wednesday that would have called for humanitarian pauses in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants to allow humanitarian aid access to the Gaza Strip.

It isn’t surprising that the Biden administration is doing whatever it can to give the Israeli government a free hand, but the U.S. will pay a real political price with many other governments for this. The U.S. is destroying what little credibility it has in the region and in many other parts of the world, and it is only going to get worse as this conflict drags on. Supporting the resolution would have been a small move in the right direction, and the U.S. couldn’t even manage to do this.

The Brazilian government, the sponsor of the vetoed resolution, will certainly remember that the U.S. chose to back its client to the hilt rather than allow the resolution to pass. Following the U.S. veto, the Brazilian ambassador said, “Very sadly, the Council was yet again unable to adopt a resolution on the crisis, again silence and inaction prevailed.” The only reason that silence and inaction prevailed in this case was that the U.S. chose to stand in the way.

The main reason that the U.S. ambassador gave for vetoing the resolution was that it didn’t mention Israel’s right to self-defense. This is much more of a cheap excuse than a real reason. The resolution condemned all attacks on civilians and all acts of terrorism, and it specifically condemned Hamas’ attacks on Israel. That ought to have been enough to satisfy the U.S. Leaving out a boilerplate reference to Israeli self-defense is a poor reason to shoot down a resolution aimed at facilitating humanitarian aid. According to the Chinese ambassador, the U.S. did not raise this objection during earlier negotiations over the wording. If the Biden administration couldn’t bring itself to vote for the resolution, the very least that they could have done was to abstain.

There is an urgent need to press for a ceasefire and for a lifting of the siege. The civilian population is running short on all basic necessities. People in Gaza are resorting to using any water sources they can find, included those that are contaminated and unsafe. The main desalination plants are unable to function because of power cuts. Conditions are going to deteriorate further the longer that this disaster is allowed to unfold, and many thousands and possibly tens of thousands of people will start perishing just from hunger, thirst, and preventable disease.