The United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution Wednesday calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.
The U.S. was the only “no” vote, against 14 “yes” votes.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield explained that the U.S. had vetoed the resolution because it did not include the release of 101 Israeli hostages as a condition:
We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional ceasefire that failed to release the hostages.
Because, as this Council has previously called for, a durable end to the war must come with the release of the hostages. These two urgent goals are inextricably linked.
This resolution abandoned that necessity, and for that reason, the United States could not support it.
Simply put, this resolution would have sent a dangerous message to Hamas: There’s no need to come back to the negotiating table.
The veto came as a relief to Israel, which is watching the Biden-Harris administration’s lame duck weeks warily. President Barack Obama used his lame-duck days to allow an anti-Israel resolution to pass at the Security Council.
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration allowed a flawed resolution to pass that did not make a ceasefire conditional on the release of hostages, even though it did mention the hostages.
