The Unit­ed States on Tues­day ve­toed an Arab-backed and wide­ly sup­port­ed U.N. res­o­lu­tion de­mand­ing an im­me­di­ate hu­man­i­tar­i­an cease-fire in the Is­rael-Hamas war in the em­bat­tled Gaza Strip, say­ing it would in­ter­fere with ne­go­ti­a­tions on a deal to free hostages ab­duct­ed in Is­rael.

The vote in the 15-mem­ber Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil was 13-1 with the Unit­ed King­dom ab­stain­ing, re­flect­ing the strong sup­port from coun­tries around the globe for end­ing the war, which start­ed when Hamas mil­i­tants in­vad­ed south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing 250 oth­ers hostage. Since then, more than 29,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in Is­rael’s mil­i­tary of­fen­sive, ac­cord­ing to the Gaza Health Min­istry, which says the vast ma­jor­i­ty were women and chil­dren.

It was the third U.S. ve­to of a Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion de­mand­ing a cease-fire in Gaza and came a day af­ter the Unit­ed States cir­cu­lat­ed a ri­val res­o­lu­tion that would sup­port a tem­po­rary cease-fire linked to the re­lease of all hostages.

Vir­tu­al­ly every coun­cil mem­ber — in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States — ex­pressed con­cern at the im­pend­ing cat­a­stro­phe in Gaza’s south­ern city of Rafah, where some 1.5 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans have sought refuge, if Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu goes ahead with his plan to evac­u­ate civil­ians and move Is­rael’s mil­i­tary of­fen­sive to the area bor­der­ing Egypt, where Is­rael says Hamas fight­ers are hid­ing.

Be­fore the vote, Al­ge­ria’s U.N. Am­bas­sador Amar Bend­ja­ma, the Arab rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the coun­cil, said: “A vote in fa­vor of this draft res­o­lu­tion is a sup­port to the Pales­tini­ans right to life. Con­verse­ly, vot­ing against it im­plies an en­dorse­ment of the bru­tal vi­o­lence and col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment in­flict­ed against them.”

U.S. Am­bas­sador Lin­da Thomas-Green­field coun­tered by say­ing the Unit­ed States un­der­stands the de­sire for ur­gent ac­tion but be­lieves the res­o­lu­tion would “neg­a­tive­ly im­pact” sen­si­tive ne­go­ti­a­tions on a hostage deal and a pause in fight­ing for at least six weeks. If that hap­pens, “we can take the time to build a more en­dur­ing peace,” she said.

The pro­posed U.S. res­o­lu­tion, she said, “would do what this text does not — pres­sure Hamas to take the hostage deal that is on the ta­ble and help se­cure a pause that al­lows hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to reach Pales­tin­ian civil­ians in des­per­ate need.”

She told re­porters the Arab draft did not link the re­lease of the hostages to a cease-fire, which would give Hamas a halt to fight­ing with­out re­quir­ing it to take any ac­tion. That would mean “that the fight­ing would have con­tin­ued be­cause with­out the hostage re­leas­es we know that the fight­ing is go­ing to con­tin­ue,” she said.

Is­rael’s U.N. Am­bas­sador Gi­lad Er­dan said the word cease-fire is used in the Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the Gen­er­al As­sem­bly and by U.N. of­fi­cials “as if it is a sil­ver bul­let, a mag­i­cal so­lu­tion to all of the re­gion’s prob­lems.”

He called that “an ab­surd no­tion,” warn­ing that a cease-fire in Gaza would en­able Hamas to rearm and re­group and “their next at­tempt­ed geno­cide against Is­raelis will on­ly be a ques­tion of when, not if.”

Riyad Man­sour, the Pales­tin­ian U.N. am­bas­sador, shot back that the “mes­sage giv­en to­day to Is­rael with this ve­to is that it can con­tin­ue to get away with mur­der.”

He warned that more ba­bies will be killed and or­phaned, more chil­dren will die of hunger, cold and dis­ease, more fam­i­lies will be threat­ened with fur­ther forced dis­place­ment, and Gaza’s en­tire 2.3 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion will be left with­out food, wa­ter, med­i­cine and shel­ter.

And in a sharply crit­i­cal mes­sage to the Unit­ed States, Is­rael’s clos­est al­ly, Man­sour said: “It means that hu­man lives that could have been saved are in­stead be­ing for­sak­en to Is­rael’s geno­ci­dal war ma­chine, de­lib­er­ate­ly, know­ing­ly, by those who op­pose a cease-fire.”

What hap­pens next re­mains to be seen.

The 22-na­tion Arab Group could take its res­o­lu­tion to the U.N. Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, which in­cludes all 193 U.N. mem­ber na­tions, where it is vir­tu­al­ly cer­tain to be ap­proved. But un­like Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tions, as­sem­bly res­o­lu­tions are not legal­ly bind­ing.

The Arab-backed res­o­lu­tion would have de­mand­ed an im­me­di­ate hu­man­i­tar­i­an cease-fire to be re­spect­ed by all par­ties, which im­plies an end to the war.

By con­trast, the U.S. draft res­o­lu­tion would sup­port a tem­po­rary cease-fire “as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble, based on the for­mu­la of all hostages be­ing re­leased,” and call for “lift­ing all bar­ri­ers to the pro­vi­sion of hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance at scale.”

It is the first time the U.S. has used the word “cease-fire,” as op­posed to ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties.

The Arab draft would al­so have de­mand­ed the im­me­di­ate re­lease of all hostages, re­ject­ed the forced dis­place­ment of Pales­tin­ian civil­ians and called for un­hin­dered hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­cess through­out Gaza.

With­out nam­ing ei­ther par­ty, it would have con­demned “all acts of ter­ror­ism” and re­it­er­at­ed the coun­cil’s “un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment” to a two-state so­lu­tion with two de­mo­c­ra­t­ic states, Is­rael and Pales­tine, liv­ing side-by-side in peace.

In mea­sures sure to anger Is­rael — and re­in­force dif­fer­ences and ten­sions be­tween U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Is­rael’s Ne­tanyahu — the U.S. draft res­o­lu­tion re­it­er­ates the same un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to a two-state so­lu­tion, which the Is­raeli leader op­pos­es.

Biden has re­peat­ed­ly called on Is­rael to pro­tect Pales­tin­ian civil­ians, and the draft res­o­lu­tion says Is­rael’s planned ma­jor ground of­fen­sive in Rafah “should not pro­ceed un­der cur­rent cir­cum­stances.”

In an­oth­er crit­i­cism di­rect­ed at Is­rael, the U.S. draft “con­demns calls by gov­ern­ment min­is­ters for the re­set­tle­ment of Gaza and re­jects an at­tempt at de­mo­graph­ic or ter­ri­to­r­i­al change in Gaza that would vi­o­late in­ter­na­tion­al law.”

Thomas-Green­field said the Unit­ed States was not set­ting a dead­line for a vote on its pro­posed res­o­lu­tion.

Rus­sia’s U.N. Am­bas­sador Vass­i­ly Neben­zia ac­cused the Unit­ed States of “du­plic­i­tous and hyp­o­crit­i­cal calls” for the coun­cil to wait for diplo­ma­cy to pro­duce re­sults on a hostage deal.

“It could not yield any re­sults be­cause the re­al goal of Wash­ing­ton is not to achieve peace in the Mid­dle East, not to pro­tect civil­ians, but rather to ad­vance their geopo­lit­i­cal agen­da, de­mand­ing at any cost for their clos­est Mid­dle East al­ly to be shield­ed,” Neben­zia told the coun­cil, claim­ing that the U.S. has giv­en “an ef­fec­tive li­cense for Is­rael to kill Pales­tini­ans.”

While this was the third U.S. ve­to of a Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion de­mand­ing an im­me­di­ate cease-fire, the coun­cil has adopt­ed two res­o­lu­tions on Gaza where the U.S. ab­stained.

Its first res­o­lu­tion, on Nov. 15, called for hu­man­i­tar­i­an paus­es to ad­dress the es­ca­lat­ing cri­sis for Pales­tin­ian civil­ians. In late No­vem­ber, a sev­en-day pause led to the re­lease of 120 hostages held by Hamas in ex­change for Is­rael’s re­lease of 200 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers.

On Dec. 22, the coun­cil adopt­ed a wa­tered-down res­o­lu­tion call­ing for im­me­di­ate­ly speed­ing aid de­liv­er­ies to des­per­ate civil­ians in Gaza, but with­out the orig­i­nal plea for an “ur­gent sus­pen­sion of hos­til­i­ties” be­tween Is­rael and Hamas.

It did call for “cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for a sus­tain­able ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties.” The steps were not de­fined, but diplo­mats said it was the coun­cil’s first ref­er­ence to stop­ping fight­ing. Be­cause of on­go­ing fight­ing and no new hu­man­i­tar­i­an pause, lit­tle aid has got­ten in­to Gaza.  —UNIT­ED NA­TIONS (AP)

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Sto­ry by EDITH M. LED­ER­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press