Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
25-12-2023
RAFAH/ GAZA STRIP: Israel’s war to destroy Hamas has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, health officials in Gaza said Friday, as Israel expanded its offensive and ordered tens of thousands more people to leave their homes.
The deaths in Gaza amount to nearly 1 percent of the territory’s prewar population the latest indication of the 11-week-old conflict’s staggering human toll.
Israel’s aerial and ground offensive has been one of the most devastating military campaigns in recent history, displacing nearly 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people and leveling wide swaths of the tiny coastal enclave. More than half a million people in Gaza, a quarter of the population are starving, according to a report Thursday from the United Nations and other agencies.
Israel declared war after Hamas militants stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking some 240 hostages. Israel has vowed to keep up the fight until Hamas is destroyed and removed from power in Gaza and all the hostages are freed.
After many delays, the UN Security Council adopted a watered-down resolution Friday calling for immediately speeding up aid deliveries to desperate civilians in Gaza.
The United States won the removal of a tougher call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas. It abstained in the vote, as did Russia, which wanted the stronger language. The resolution was the first on the war to make it through the council after the US vetoed two earlier ones that called for humanitarian pauses and a full cease-fire.
The US also negotiated the removal of language that would have given the UN authority to inspect aid going into Gaza, something Israel says it must do to ensure material does not reach Hamas.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, thanked the US for its support and sharply criticized the UN for its failure to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks. The US vetoed a resolution in October that would have included a condemnation because it didn’t also underline Israel’s right to self-defense.
Hamas said in a statement that the UN resolution should have demanded an immediate halt to Israel’s offensive, and it blamed the United States for pushing “to empty the resolution of its essence” before Friday’s Security Council vote.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, reiterated his longstanding call for a humanitarian cease-fire.
Guterres said nothing can justify Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks, its taking of hostages, its rocket launches against Israel and what he called its use of civilians as human shields but “at the same time, these violations of international humanitarian law can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, and they do not free Israel from its own legal obligations under international law,” the secretary-general said. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
