U.S. vetoes U.N. cease-fire bid as Israel pushes south into Gaza

Despite the U.N. chief's rare attempt to pressure the U.N. Security Council, the United States vetoed a draft resolution backed by most other council members demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel's military offensive pushed Palestinians toward starvation.

London-based Save the Children warned food and other basic items were being used as weapons of war, saying it "has continued to hear harrowing accounts of families going multiple days without food, shelter, water and access to health care, including in the so called ‘safe zone’ of Al-Mawasi," a strip of land with a makeshift tent camp by the Mediterranean Sea.

"Deliberately depriving the civilian population of food, water and fuel and wilfully impeding relief supplies is using starvation as a method of warfare, which inevitably has a deadly impact on children.," the organization said on Saturday. In Gaza, its country director, Jason Lee, said children were condemned to more bombardment, starvation and disease. 

“The repeated failure of the international community to act signifies a death knell to children," he said. "Israel is squeezing Palestinian children and families into ‘death zones’ dubbed as ‘safe zones.’ I’ve seen children and families roaming the streets of what hasn’t been flattened in Gaza, with no food, nowhere to go, and nothing to survive on. Even the internationally-funded humanitarian aid response – Gaza’s last lifeline - has been choked by Israeli-imposed restrictions."

The U.S. decision on Friday to block the world body's most powerful arm from approving a draft resolution diplomatically isolated Washington, Israel's main ally. Thirteen of the council's 15 members voted for the proposal by the United Arab Emirates; the United Kingdom abstained.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres had for the first time in his career invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, forcing the council to address the Israel-Hamas war as an urgent threat to international peace and security.

"We are at the breaking point," Guterres told the council. "There is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza, which would have devastating consequences."

The council's five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. – each have veto power to block resolutions. Their status reflects a frozen power structure dating to the end of World War II. The other 10 members are elected to two-year seats without veto power.

U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood told the council the U.S. blocked the resolution because "nearly all of our recommendations were ignored. And the result of this rushed process was an imbalanced resolution that was divorced from reality, that would not move the needle forward, on the ground, in any concrete way. And so, we regretfully could not support it."

He criticized the council for failing to condemn Hamas' Oct. 7 surprise attack on Israel in which the militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 250 others hostage, and insisted a halt in fighting would "plant the seeds for the next war.”

The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were in Washington on Friday attempting to persuade U.S. President Joe Biden's administration to drop its opposition to a humanitarian ceasefire.

After the U.N. vote, the U.A.E.'s Deputy Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab said the council was "untethered” from its job of ensuring international peace and security. “What is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?” he asked.

It was the third U.S. veto of a council measure calling for a cease-fire in the war. Human Rights Watch's U.N. director, Louis Charbonneau, said "by continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities, including collectively punishing the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes."

'No food, just bombs'

At least 17,1777 Palestianians have been killed since Hamas' attack prompting Israel to declare war. Another 46,000 Palestinians and 5,400 Israelis have been injured, while over 52,000 homes have been destroyed, according to figures from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Israel said it was waging close-quarter combat in southern Gaza. For Palestinian innocents caught up in the fighting, an already tenuous existence slipped into the apocalyptic, aid grew scarcer and no clear solution was in sight as violence rose and the war entered a third month.

“We do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore,” U.N. emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said. The humanitarian plan to protect civilians is “in tatters,” he said, and no place was safe due amid the Israeli military's assault in southern Gaza.

More than 90% of the people living in Gaza – some 1.93 million – are estimated to be displaced as Israeli Defense Forces seek to root out and destroy Hamas. Most sheltered in overcrowded U.N. facilities with little sanitation, clean water and access to health care.

“We need peace for health,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, who described Gaza's health care system as “on its knees.” WHO scheduled a special session of its executive board for Sunday in Geneva to “consider the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

It documented 212 attacks in Gaza affecting 56 facilities and 59 ambulances; just 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain at least partially operational. World Food Program's representative Samer Abdel Jaber said almost no one in Gaza has enough to eat and in some areas “nine out of 10 people went a full day and night with nothing to eat.”

Conditions worsened during the week as IDF forces moved into the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, where tens of thousands of displaced people from northern Gaza were sheltering. Many were forced to flee even farther south to Rafah, where shelters are already overcrowded. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said after returning from Gaza that he saw "no water, no sanitation, no food, just bombs.”

Dr. Christos Christou, president of Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, said his staff describe that situation as going well beyond a humanitarian crisis. "It is a humanitarian catastrophe," he said. In an open letter to the U.N. Security Council, Christou, a Greek general and emergency surgeon, called on members to use their leverage to help stop the bloodshed.

Health care workers “are utterly exhausted and in despair,” said Christou, adding that doctors have been forced to amputate limbs from children suffering from severe burns without anesthesia or sterilized surgical tools. “There is no justification for the atrocious attacks on health care."

This story has been updated with additional details.