All that was left was to know the score, the magnitude of the win, because the result was a foregone conclusion.
The United Nations General Assembly, in emergency session, approved a non-binding resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire by a large majority. There were 153 votes in favor, 23 abstentions and 10 against. Once again, the loneliness of Israel in its war against Hamas, which is causing an indiscriminate massacre of Palestinians in Gaza, according to the UN itself, and the loneliness of the United States in its support for its ally in the Middle East, became evident.
Washington’s solidarity with Jerusalem was expressed once again at a strange time. Just hours before this vote, President Joe Biden issued his harshest warning against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since this crisis began.
Off camera, at a campaign reception, Biden stressed that Netanyahu has to make important decisions. “He has to change,” he warned, because “the indiscriminate bombings” in Gaza are driving Israel toward isolation. “He is beginning to lose support in the world,” Biden stressed.
He seemed to anticipate the outcome at the UN. The vote is only a declaration of global goodwill, a toast to the sun because the Assembly lacks the executive power to impose one of its decisions. But it is a great moral victory for Palestine, which sees how the world en masse is on its side in what they consider to be a genocide against its people.
Estimates consider that 18,000 Palestinians have died since the Israeli army retaliated after the brutal attack carried out by Hamas in Israel on October 7, with 1,200 dead and more than 200 kidnapped, of which there are still more than a hundred missing.
A similar situation already occurred a month and a half ago, at the end of October. Then, the matter reached the Assembly by exceptional means because the US vetoed a resolution demanding the immediate cessation of hostilities.
On that occasion, only twelve countries joined Israel and Washington in voting against, with 120 in favor and 45 abstentions (several European). This time the margin has only increased.
The case again came to a vote of the entire body that makes up the UN for another American veto, but this time it has a different meaning due to the way it occurred.
Last week, the Security Council considered requesting a humanitarian ceasefire after the exceptional initiative of Ántónio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, who appealed to Article 99 of the institution’s Charter, which had only been resorted to in three times previously.
He justified his move by the danger of the conflict spreading throughout the area and by the glimmer of an irreparable humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with a total collapse of the system. The ceasefire project, endorsed by a hundred countries, was stopped by the US with its veto, while the United Kingdom abstained and thirteen voted in favor.
After that veto, it emerged that the Biden administration had bypassed Congress to provide ammunition to Israel’s tanks.
