The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Monday adopted a US-drafted resolution supporting a ceasefire plan in Gaza, as Washington leads an intense diplomatic campaign to push Hamas to accept the proposal.
The text — passed with 14 votes in favor and Russia abstaining — “welcomes” the truce and hostage release proposal announced on May 31 by President Joe Biden, and urges “parties to fully implement its terms without delay and without condition. “The resolution says Israel has accepted the truce plan, and “calls upon Hamas to also accept it.”
The United States, a staunch ally of Israel, has been widely criticized for having blocked several previous UN draft resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
But Biden late last month launched a new US effort to secure a truce and hostage release. “Today we voted for peace,” US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the UN session.
“Today this Council sent a clear message to Hamas: accept the ceasefire deal on the table. Israel has already agreed to this deal and the fighting could stop today if Hamas would do the same.”
Under the proposal, Israel would withdraw from Gaza population centers and Hamas would free the hostages. The ceasefire would last an initial six weeks, with it extended as negotiators seek a permanent end to hostilities.
Meanwhile, a group of anti-Israel protesters gathered outside a downtown Manhattan exhibit that memorializes the deaths of people who were butchered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7 last year. The depraved celebration saw the crowd lighting flares and waving a flag associated with the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah in front of the Nova Music Festival Exhibition on Wall Street.
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