NEW YORK
US pushes for harsh condemnation of Hamas but fails to achieve the consensus necessary for a statement.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which met behind closed doors in an emergency session amid the war between Israel and Gaza but failed to achieve the unanimity needed for a joint statement.
At least 1,100 people have already been killed since Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls the blockaded Gaza Strip, launched an assault on Israeli towns on Saturday and took hundreds of people hostage.
The United States called on the council’s 15 members to strongly condemn Hamas.
“There are a good number of countries that condemned the Hamas attacks. They’re obviously not all,” senior US diplomat Robert Wood told reporters after the session.
“You could probably figure out one of them without me saying anything,” said Wood, in a reference to Russia, whose relations with the West have deteriorated sharply since its invasion of Ukraine.
The council met for about 90 minutes and heard a briefing from the UN Middle East peace envoy Tor Wennesland.
Diplomats said members led by Russia were hoping for a broader focus than condemning Hamas.
Palestine’s permanent observer to the UN on Sunday urged the international community not to let Israel “double down on its terrible choices,” but to instead encourage it to change course and remind it that “there is a path to peace, where neither Palestinians nor Israelis are killed. And it is the one diametrically opposed to the one Israel has embarked on.”
Riyad Mansour was speaking to reporters outside the Security Council chamber at the UN headquarters in New York, as ambassadors from the 15-nation body walked past for emergency consultations behind closed doors, called for by Malta and later by the UAE, to discuss the escalation in Israel and Gaza.
More than 700 Israelis have been killed in an unprecedented, wide-ranging incursion into Israel by Hamas gunmen accompanied by thousands of rockets launched by the group. At least 415 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
No statement was agreed by council members during the meeting, with Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun telling reporters on his way out that that is “abnormal.”
Mansour lamented that “history for some media and politicians starts when Israelis are killed. Our people have endured one deadly year after another.
“We came to the Security Council month after month warning of the consequences of Israeli impunity and international inaction.”