America Turns to UN Security Council, Seeking Cease-Fire and Return of Israeli and U.S. Hostages

Updated at 4:16 p.m. EDTFrance is calling for an “immediate” United Nations vote on a four-paragraph Security Council resolution it is proposing for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza. The French proposal is competing with a much longer American text. The French proposal demands an “immediate humanitarian cease-fire for the month of Ramadan,” and, separately, an “immediate and unconditional re;ease of all hostages.” Diplomats tell the Sun that the Council is likely to vote on the two resolutions Friday morning. According to at least two sources, Russia intends to veto the American text, after which America will abstain on the French proposal. The American proposal is much more elaborate than the French one. As of this writing, President Biden’s diplomats have failed to secure a deal to release Israeli and American hostages held by Hamas at Gaza. Instead, they turned to an Israel-hostile arena, the United Nations, hoping to pass a Security Council resolution as early as Friday. Long accused by Arabs, Europeans, and protesters at home of using its veto power to prevent a forced end to Israel’s war against Hamas, America is now relenting. “Well, in fact, we actually have a resolution that we put forward right now that’s before the United Nations Security Council that does call for an immediate cease-fire tied to the release of hostages,” Secretary Blinken said Tuesday in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, mid-level Israeli envoys are at Doha, Qatar, conducting American-backed negotiations over a possible release of several dozens of the 134 hostages that have been held in Gaza dungeons since October 7. To date, Hamas has rejected all U.S.-backed proposals. Rather than aid these negotiations, the American-led UN actions could act to toughen Hamas’s demands for a weeks-long cease-fire, a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from northern Gaza, and the release of more than a thousand terrorists held in Israeli prisons. Israel is also concerned that if passed, a council resolution could harm its war against Hamas terrorists. On Tuesday, Canada imposed an arms embargo on Israel, and Britain is considering doing the same. Perceived Israeli violations of a UN resolution would embolden voices within the Biden administration and in Congress calling America to follow suit. Shortages of ammunition and other military supplies will complicate Israel’s endgame at Rafah. Mr. Biden opposes an Israeli operation at Rafah, where more than a million noncombatants are sheltered alongside the remaining four Hamas battalions, as well as the terrorist group’s top leaders. Next week top Israeli officials are expected at Washington for meetings with White House counterparts who will attempt to finesse the dispute.Regardless, Israel will enter Rafah “with or without the United States,” a close confidante of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Ron Dermer, who heads the Israel delegation to Washington, said Thursday in a podcast interview. Meanwhile, the current American proposal contains a retreat from a council resolution that passed in December. At that time the Security Council demanded an “immediate and unconditional release of all hostages” — language that is notably absent from the new resolution proposal. “We were disappointed to see in your draft a weakened mention of the need to solve the crisis,” hostage relatives wrote in a letter to the American ambassador at the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. In the letter, the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum noted that among the 134 remaining hostages, eight are Americans. “The hostage situation is unprecedented and historically unique,” a former Israeli UN ambassador now advising the Forum, Daniel Carmon, tells the Sun. “This proposal is full of aspirational and empty calls for many things. Yet, the only issue that is watered down from past resolutions is the demand to release hostages.” The language of the proposed American resolution ties negotiations on hostage release to a cease-fire and to added humanitarian assistance in Gaza. It even equates the elderly, the women, the children, and the party goers who were snatched by Hamas on October 7 with Arab terrorists held in Israeli prisons. The proposal says the council “determines the imperative of an immediate and sustained ceasefire to protect civilians on all sides, allow for the delivery of essential humanitarian assistance, and alleviate humanitarian suffering, and towards that end unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages.” It also demands that “Hamas and other armed groups immediately grant humanitarian access to all remaining hostages,” and that both Israel and Hamas “respect the dignity and human rights of all individuals detained.” The text expresses “grave concern for the safety and well-being of the more than 130 hostages” in Gaza, as well as “for the safety and well-being of the civilian population of Gaza, including the more than 1.5 million civilians now taking refuge in Rafah.” For the first time, the proposed resolution calls Hamas a terrorist organization. It also expresses the council’s “unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-State solution.” In its 26 operational paragraphs, most of which deal with humanitarian assistance to Gaza’s population, the American text repeatedly uses the term “all sides” of the Gaza war. “It attempts even-handedness,” Mr. Carmon says. Yet, he adds, “Israel is a UN member state, while Hamas has no obligation to heed such resolutions. And the most acute issue in this war, the hostages, is treated as an afterthought.”

America Turns to UN Security Council, Seeking Cease-Fire and Return of Israeli and U.S. Hostages

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