In a vain effort to press the Biden administration to drop its opposition to calling for a halt to the fighting, the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were all in Washington on Friday.
Along with the vote, the Arab diplomats’ mission served to shift responsibility more squarely onto the United States for protecting Israel from growing demands to stop the airstrikes that are killing thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Ambassador Nicolas De Rivière of France, a veto-wielding permanent council member who supported the resolution, lamented its lack of unity and pleaded “for a new, immediate and lasting humanitarian truce that should lead to a sustainable cease-fire.”
The council called the emergency meeting to hear from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who for the first time invoked Article 99 of the U.N. Charter, which enables a U.N. chief to raise threats he sees to international peace and security.
Guterres said he raised Article 99 — which hadn’t been used at the U.N. since 1971 — because “there is a high risk of the total collapse of the humanitarian support system in Gaza.” The U.N. anticipates this would result in “a complete breakdown of public order and increased pressure for mass displacement into Egypt,” he warned.
And Louis Charbonneau, U.N. director at Human Rights Watch, said that by providing weapons and diplomatic cover to Israel “as it commits atrocities, including collectively punishing the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza, the U.S. risks complicity in war crimes.”
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Ceasefire without a plan is as useless as no ceasfire. There was a ceasfire on October 7th and that didn't stop Hamas from slaughtering all those innocents or firing thousands of rockets. That's the usual way all these ceasefires have ended.