As Israel's war on Gaza continues, the United States on Wednesday vetoed the latest resolution on the Gaza Strip in the United Nations Security Council, which demanded an immediate, unconditional and lasting ceasefire as well as full humanitarian access for civilians. The most recent veto comes in the face of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe raging for more than a year in the territory, where people continue to die from violence, disease and starvation, with the threat of famine looming.
Despite receiving 14 votes in favor, the draft resolution introduced by the 10 elected members of the Security Council in New York failed to pass Wednesday morning due to a veto by the permanent member. Today's vote marks the fourth time the US government has vetoed a resolution demanding an end to the war in Gaza since Israel's offensive began in October 2023.
Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. If passed, the resolution would have rejected “any effort to starve Palestinians” while also demanding the facilitation of full, rapid, safe and unhindered entry of aid at scale to and throughout the Gaza Strip and its delivery to all those in urgent need.
The US is one of the few states in the world that continues to provide political and military support for a war against civilians that has already claimed more than 43,000 lives and is characterized by grave war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces.
These include collective punishment of the civilian population, use of starvation as a method of warfare, denial of humanitarian aid, targeted killing of civilians, indiscriminate killing of civilians, disproportionate attacks, forced displacement, torture, enforced disappearances, and other atrocity crimes.
There is growing evidence that Israeli policies and military actions amount to genocide, one of the worst crimes known to humankind. In addition to genocide, criminal acts under the Genocide Convention include conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. All of these acts are criminal offenses.
Leading UN officials have described the situation in Gaza as "apocalyptic," "hell on earth," "beyond catastrophic," and said that the humanitarian community is "running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza".
While the humanitarian situation throughout the territory is catastrophic and rapidly deteriorating, the situation in the northern part of the territory is currently the direst, with civilians starving while the world watches.
North Gaza has been under almost total siege for the past month. On October 6, 2024, Israel declared the entire northern Gaza Strip a combat zone and ordered all civilians to evacuate. Since then, tens of thousands of people in northern Gaza have been trapped in their homes, unable to leave the combat zone.
An estimated 100,000 people in the North Gaza Governorate are completely cut off from humanitarian aid, with the UN condemning "unlawful interference with humanitarian aid". In the north, the IDF is effectively subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and the risk of starvation, forcing them to choose between mass displacement and being trapped in an active conflict zone.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned on Tuesday that people in besieged areas of the North Gaza Governorate have been struggling to stay alive for more than 40 days with virtually no aid and all attempts by the UN to support people in the North either being denied or impeded.
In November alone, 27 out of 31 planned humanitarian missions were rejected. The other four were severely hampered, preventing them from carrying out the full range of critical work they had planned.
Food security experts have warned recently that famine is likely imminent in areas of northern Gaza, while the humanitarian situation throughout the territory is extremely grave and rapidly deteriorating. In its alert, the Famine Review Committee (FRC) of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) stressed that immediate action is needed within days, not weeks, to address this catastrophic situation.
UN officials say Israeli ground operations have left Palestinians without the basic necessities to survive, forcing them to flee for their lives on multiple occasions and cutting off their escape and supply routes. They say civilians are starving while the world watches.
International humanitarian law (IHL) requires Israel to ensure that the basic needs of the population of Gaza are met. Among other things, it must ensure that Gaza is supplied with sufficient water, food, medical supplies, and other basic necessities to enable the population to survive.
However, since Israel declared a full siege on the Gaza Strip on October 9 last year the amount of aid entering the enclave has never been sufficient to meet the needs on the ground. For more than a year, Israel has failed to provide or even facilitate the delivery of essential supplies for the survival of some 2.1 million people still trapped in Gaza.
The UN humanitarian office reports that as of Monday, Israeli authorities had facilitated just over 40 percent of the nearly 320 planned humanitarian movements into the Gaza Strip this month. The rest have either been denied, impeded or canceled due to security and logistical challenges.
OCHA reported on Wednesday that aid operations across Gaza continue to be severely hampered by access restrictions, severely limiting the critical delivery of food, medical supplies and fuel - and exacerbating already disastrous humanitarian conditions.
Several UN reports have accused the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) of committing serious violations of international law in Gaza, many of which may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
In a report released last week, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories found that Israel's war in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions deliberately imposed on the Palestinians there.
The Committee stated that by imposing a siege on Gaza, obstructing humanitarian aid, and targeting and killing civilians and aid workers, despite repeated UN appeals, binding orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Security Council resolutions, Israel is deliberately causing death, starvation, and serious injury, using starvation as a method of warfare, and inflicting collective punishment on the Palestinian population.
Meanwhile, Israeli bombardment from the air, land and sea continues to be reported throughout much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in increasing civilian deaths, maiming, injuries, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Gaza health officials report that nearly 45,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, the majority women and children, have been killed and more than 104,000 injured since Israel began its war on the Palestinian enclave more than a year ago.
Among the dead are at least 333 aid workers, 247 UN staff, 1047 health workers and 180 journalists. More than 10,000 people - including thousands of children - are missing and presumed dead.
It is estimated that a quarter of the injured in Gaza will require lifelong specialized rehabilitation and supportive care, including those with severe limb injuries, amputations, spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injuries and severe burns.
Since last October, more than 160,000 people, or over 7 percent of Gaza's population, have been killed, wounded or reported missing in Israel's attacks on Gaza. While the world's influential governments stand idly by, the suffering of the people of Gaza continues in all parts of the territory.
Some 1.9 million people - 90 percent of Gaza's total population - have been displaced by Israeli military attacks or Israeli evacuation orders, including people who have been forced to flee dozens of times.
Leading UN officials, humanitarian organizations, international human rights groups and legal experts have consistently called on UN Member States, in particular the United States, European Union members and the United Kingdom, to take concrete action to protect the civilian population of Gaza from unlawful attacks.
They have also urged UN member states to refrain from statements or actions that would legitimize, even indirectly, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
But it is not only the governments of some Western democracies that show their failure. Apart from humanitarian and human rights organizations, which are clearly speaking out about the horror, most civil society organizations, including political parties across the spectrum, do not even acknowledge what is happening in Gaza. They either ignore it, deny it, or even try to justify some of the worst crimes known to humanity.