As expected, the US vetoed a UN Security Council Resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza; indeed, we were the only one of the 15 members to vote against (the UK abstained). The pressure against Israel continues.
Najib Jobain, Samy Magdy, and Elena Becatoros, AP (“Israel presses on with Gaza bombardments, including in areas where it told civilians to flee“):
Israeli warplanes struck parts of the Gaza Strip overnight into Saturday in relentless bombardments, including some of the dwindling slivers of land Palestinians had been told to evacuate to in the territory’s south.
The latest strikes came a day after the United States vetoed a United Nations resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza, despite it being backed by the vast majority of Security Council members and many other nations. The vote in the 15-member council was 13-1, with the United Kingdom abstaining.
“Attacks from air, land and sea are intense, continuous and widespread,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said before the vote. Gaza residents “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival.”
Guterres told the council that Gaza was at “a breaking point” with the humanitarian support system at risk of total collapse, and that he feared “the consequences could be devastating for the security of the entire region.”
Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt are effectively sealed, leaving Palestinians with no option other than to seek refuge within the territory. The overall Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 17,400, the majority of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-controlled territory, whose counts do not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Israel holds Hamas responsible for civilian casualties, accusing the militants of using civilians as human shields, and says it’s made considerable efforts with its evacuation orders to get civilians out of harm’s way.
On Saturday, the Israeli military said its forces fought and killed Hamas militants and found weapons inside a school in Shijaiyah in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza City. It said soldiers discovered a tunnel shaft in the same neighborhood where they found an elevator, and in a separate incident, militants shot at troops from an U.N.-run school in the northern town of Beit Hanoun.
Residents reported airstrikes and shelling in Gaza’s north and south Saturday, including the city of Rafah, which lies near the Egyptian border and where the Israeli army had ordered civilians to move to.
The main hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah received 71 dead and 160 wounded over the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said Saturday morning. In the southern city of Khan Younis, 62 dead and another 99 wounded were taken to Nasser Hospital in the past 24 hours, the ministry said.
Israel has been trying to secure the military’s hold on northern Gaza, where furious fighting has underscored heavy resistance from Hamas. Tens of thousands of residents are believed to remain despite evacuation orders, six weeks after troops and tanks rolled in during the war sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 raid targeting civilians in Israel.
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Despite growing international pressure, the Biden administration remains opposed to an open-ended cease-fire, arguing it would enable Hamas to continue posing a threat to Israel. Officials have expressed misgivings in recent days about the rising civilian death toll and dire humanitarian crisis, but have not pushed publicly for Israel to wind down the war, now in its third month.
“We have not given a firm deadline to Israel, not really our role,” deputy national security adviser Jon Finer told a security forum a day before the U.S. veto in the U.N. Security Council. “That said, we do have influence, even if we don’t have ultimate control over what happens on the ground in Gaza.”
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant argued that “a cease-fire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza, and signalling terror groups everywhere.”
A delegation of foreign ministers from mainly Arab nations and Turkey was in Washington to push the U.S. to drop its objections to an immediate cease-fire. Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said Friday ahead of a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel’s bombardment and siege of Gaza is a war crime that is destabilizing the region.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the U.S. veto showed Washington’s isolation.
“The American political system is now helpless on issues related to Israel. Therefore, Israel acts recklessly on this issue and continues its oppression.,” Fidan told Turkey’s state-run news agency Anadolu and broadcaster TRT.
Fidan and the Palestinian, Saudi, Indonesian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Qatari and Nigerian ministers met with Blinken to press for an end to the fighting, while the group is to meet Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Melanie Joly on Saturday.
As fighting resumed after a brief truce more than a week ago, the U.S. urged Israel to do more to protect civilians and allow more aid to besieged Gaza. The appeals came as Israel expanded its blistering air and ground campaign into southern Gaza, especially Khan Younis, sending tens of thousands more fleeing.
Bassam Masoud and Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Reuters (“Intensified fighting across Gaza as U.S. vetoes ceasefire“):
Israel pounded the Gaza Strip from north to south on Saturday in an expanded phase of its two-month-old war against Hamas, after the United States wielded its U.N. Security Council veto to shield its ally from a global demand for a ceasefire.
Thirteen of the Security Council’s 15 members voted for the resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that was blocked by Washington. Britain abstained.
Since a truce collapsed last week, Israel has expanded its ground campaign into the southern half of the Gaza Strip by launching the storming of the main southern city Khan Younis. Simultaneously, both sides have reported a major surge in fighting in the north.
Residents of Khan Younis said on Saturday that Israeli forces were ordering people out of another district just west of positions the Israelis stormed earlier this week, suggesting a further assault could be imminent.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have already been forced from their homes, many fleeing multiple times. With fighting raging across the length of the territory, residents and U.N. agencies say there is now effectively nowhere safe to go, though Israel disputes this.
Israel has blocked Gazans from fleeing along the main north-south route down the spine of the narrow strip, and is shunting them instead towards the Mediterranean coast.
In Khan Younis, the dead and wounded arrived through the night at the overwhelmed Nasser hospital. A medic ran out of an ambulance with the limp body of a small girl in a pink track suit. Inside, wounded children wailed and writhed on the tile floor as nurses raced to comfort them. Outside, bodies were lined up in white shrouds.
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There were no new figures on Saturday for dead and wounded from other parts of Gaza, including the entire northern half, where hospitals have ceased functioning and ambulances often can no longer reach the dead.
“We believe the number of martyrs under the rubble might be greater than those received at hospitals,” health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra told Reuters.
Fighting in the north has been its most intense in parts of Gaza City and settlements on its northern edge, where huge explosions could be seen from across the fence in Israel. Northern Gaza families were posting messages on the internet pleading with emergency crews to venture into Gaza City to rescue loved ones still trapped there.
Jeremy Bowen, BBC international editor, Jerusalem (“US uses veto but pressure for Gaza ceasefire is building“):
UN secretary general António Guterres has spoken about the “serious risk to the maintenance of international peace and security” in the Gaza conflict, citing the spillover of hostilities in “the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen”.
He triggered Article 99, prompting a UN Security Council vote on Friday, because he believes this is a very urgent matter which must be brought to the attention of the council.
The Israeli government detests the UN and they detest the secretary general.
The Israelis rejected his description, claiming Mr Guterres is in fact the threat to world peace because he is pandering to Hamas by trying to end the fighting now, before their mission to destroy the group has been concluded.
That ill-feeling will not have improved after the secretary general also mentioned that one of the risks is that the situation in Gaza could get so bad that there would be a mass displacement of Palestinians over the border into Egypt – which is also of huge concern to the Egyptian government.
There was, Mr Guterres said, a high risk of the “total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza”. And the Palestinians say that is exactly what Israel wants because it wants to get all Palestinians out of Gaza.
Journalists are not permitted by Israel to enter Gaza so I can’t report from there myself, but what the secretary general is saying sounds pretty accurate from the pictures and video we can see and the people we speak to.
By all the measures you can think of, the situation there for civilians is absolutely catastrophic, as they are subjected to a remorseless military campaign. Israel says they are doing what they can to save civilian lives but insists Hamas holds responsibility for using them as human shields.
At the UN, the Americans duly vetoed this resolution calling for a ceasefire. For those concerned about the significant loss of life, that does sound a bit hollow – the Americans claim the Israelis are saying they will stick to the rules of war and avoid unnecessary civilian deaths. But, they say, there is a gap between what Israel says and what it does.
I think the strategy behind the secretary general’s decision to bring a vote – which he knew would probably get vetoed – was to hurry up the inevitable moment when the Americans will say to Israel: “Enough is enough, you’ve had enough time and killed enough people and it’s time for a ceasefire.”
Some diplomats I have spoken to have said they might give the Israelis another month – I think Mr Guterres’s strategy is to try and shorten that, partly by increasing international pressure and also partly by shaming the Americans into thinking that they cannot continue to hold this position as it becomes less and less tenable.
That pressure has also increased today with the publication of footage of prisoners in Gaza, held by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), stripped to their underwear and being driven away in trucks. It’s a cruel image of war seeing these men, which local reports on social media suggest could be as many as 700.
Those same sources, including family of some of the men, say that they were taken from a UN school where they were sheltering, and where others tried to get away and were killed.
A horrendous video circulated yesterday of six people lying dead in the street – said to be from that same area and near that same school – and one of them was a bloody corpse lying on top of a white flag he had apparently been carrying.
The IDF say they are trying to work out who is a suspect and who is responsible for those terrible attacks on 7 October – and that they are all the while observing the international law on conflict.
But for those who have little sympathy for what Israel is doing, or have lost sympathy because of the level of killing that has been carried out in Gaza, those people are saying that this is another sign of Israeli indifference to the dignity and the health of Palestinians.
Merlyn Thomas and Ethar Shalaby, BBC (“Al-Mawasi: Gaza humanitarian zone not humane, evacuees say“):
As Israel presses its military offensive across Gaza, the army has been repeatedly advising some two million civilians to move to a “humanitarian zone” smaller than London’s Heathrow Airport.
Al-Mawasi is a narrow strip of land by the Mediterranean Sea. It has few buildings and largely consists of sandy dunes and agricultural land.
The zone designated as safe by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is just 8.5 sq km (3.3 sq miles).[…]
The IDF has urged civilians to move to al-Mawasi on at least 15 occasions on social media, the last on 2 December.
The first mention of the humanitarian zone was on 18 October, when the IDF’s Arabic spokesperson posted on X: “The IDF orders Gaza residents to move to the humanitarian zone in the area of al-Mawasi, to which international humanitarian aid will be directed if necessary.”
Another post, from 21 October, stated: “If your life and the lives of those you love are important to you, head south of Wadi Gaza. We advise you to arrive at the humanitarian area in Mawasi according to our instructions.”
Little to no internet connectivity has made it difficult for people to find safe areas in other parts of Gaza.
However, even the IDF instructions on al-Mawasi have changed several times. Civilians say the changing messaging has made it difficult for them to know exactly where to find safety there too.Each IDF post has been accompanied by a map pinpointing a small area within al-Mawasi that Gazans should evacuate to.
But different areas in al-Mawasi have been designated as “humanitarian zones” by Israel on different dates.
On 18 October, the IDF designated the humanitarian zone marked in purple below. But three days later, the IDF declared a different area – shown in blue.
Then, on 30 October, the area changed again – to the one marked in green.
To the extent Israel’s war aim of eliminating Hamas is just—and I believe it is—it remains unclear to me what more they are supposed to do to protect civilians given the circumstances. Gaza is a tiny, highly urbanized area, and Hamas militants are illegally hiding among the civilian population. Egypt has sealed its borders, meaning safe areas—which the IDF is taking great pains to announce, complete with color-coded maps—are likely the best of bad alternatives.
Whether Israel’s war aims are achievable, alas, is a different question altogether. Two months in, it’s hard to know how close the IDF is to destroying Hamas. And it remains unclear what the end state is. A Palestinian zone in Gaza run by someone (who?) other than Hamas? An Israeli-occupied Gaza?
Regardless, it’s undeniable that the result is civilians, including children, being killed in astonishing numbers. World opinion has largely turned against Israel as a result. And, while some of this can surely be explained by hatred of the Jews, it’s clearly much more than that. After all, the US was joined by France, the UK, and Japan in voting against the October 16 ceasefire resolution. Less that two months laters, France and Japan are on the other side and my strong guess is that the UK abstained only to avoid voting against its strongest ally.
While there is some division within the Biden administration and the Democratic Party as a whole, my guess is that US support for Israel will continue for quite some time. A Pew poll released yesterday shows American public support rather strong.
On the matter of who’s responsible for the war:
- [F]ar more Americans (65%) say Hamas bears a lot of responsibility for the current conflict than say that about the Israeli government (35%).
- Majorities of both Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (73%) and Democrats and Democratic leaners (62%) say Hamas has a lot of responsibility for the conflict. But Democrats (50%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (21%) to say the Israeli government bears a lot of responsibility.
- About half of adults ages 18 to 29 (46%) say Hamas has a lot of responsibility for the war. That compares with majorities of 60% or more among older age groups.
On Israel’s conduct of the war, results are somewhat mixed:
- Americans also differ over Israel’s ongoing military operation against Hamas, with nearly a third (32%) not sure.
- About a quarter (27%) say Israel is going too far in its current military operation, while about as many (25%) say it is taking the right approach; 16% of Americans say Israel is not going far enough militarily.
- More than four-in-ten Democrats (45%) say Israel is going too far in its military operation against Hamas, compared with 12% of Republicans.
- There also are age differences in these opinions, with younger Americans more likely than older age groups to say Israel is going too far.
OBiden’s handling of the war gets poor reviews, but for weird reasons:
- Roughly a third of adults (35%) approve of the Biden administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, while 41% disapprove and 24% are not sure.
- Republicans disapprove of the administration’s response by about two-to-one (51% disapprove, 28% approve). Democrats are more divided: 44% approve of the administration’s response, 33% disapprove and 22% are not sure.
- Adults under age 30 are particularly disapproving of the administration’s response to the conflict. Just 19% approve, while 46% disapprove. The administration’s response is viewed less negatively among older age groups.
- Americans generally differ over whether President Joe Biden is striking the right balance in dealing with the Israelis and Palestinians (25%), favoring the Israelis too much (21%), or favoring the Palestinians too much (16%). Nearly four-in-ten adults say they are not sure how Biden is handling this.
So, obviously, we have to filter these results through partisan lenses. Republicans are naturally going to oppose pretty much anything Biden does simply because he’s the head of the opposition party, whereas Democrats are reflexively going to support their guy. Yet Republicans actually support the Israeli war effort more strongly than do Democrats!
