Why oh why does the US keep vetoing UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza? Are we really that brutal and heartless?
Oh come on. This isn't complicated. It's because these immediate ceasefire resolutions never demand that Hamas immediately release its hostages. That's a loud tell that the resolution backers aren't really serious about any kind of fairminded solution.
For my money, the resolution that would make the most sense is a purely humanitarian one with no gotchas. Someone on the Security Council should offer a resolution demanding that Israel and Egypt allow some minimum amount of food, water, power, and medical aid into Gaza. That would be hard to veto.
This is the piece that keeps me gobsmacked. I understand both sides of this conflict, and I empathize with both sides. But for all the "pressure" that Joe Biden is supposedly putting on Israel over its mass destruction of Gaza, the one thing that (apparently) hasn't happened is pressure to allow in far more humanitarian aid. The US has limited leverage over Israel, but on this one subject it sure seems like Biden could pretty much lay down the law if he wanted to. Why doesn't he?
conspiracy time...
wouldn't surprise me if we were routing weapons through israel to ukraine, and the price is keeping our mouth shut re gaza
Good one.
How about a resolution for a large contingent of UN Peacekeepers from Africa and the Middle East, holding the peace between Israelis and Palestinians?
Would it be a requirement that Hamas release all the hostages? If not, that's probably a non-starter.
Would it be a requirement that Isreal release all the hostages? If not, that's probably a non-starter.
If the real reason we keep vetoing ceasefire resolutions was simply that they didn't include a demand Hamas release the hostages, it seems that the US or some other country would simply introduce a ceasefire resolution doing just that. A find it highly unlikely that such a resolution would not also be vetoed.
If the hostages are returned, Israel will immediately violate the ceasefire. Both sides know this, so they don’t offer it.
Yes. Israel has never been an honest partner. Moreover, Israel holds many, many more Palestinian hostages, and they need to be included in any agreement. In fact, they've been grabbing Palestinians off the streets to make sure they've got even more "bargaining chips."
Not that Israel has shown any interest in bargaining.
I seem to recall that last November Israel released two Palestinian prisoners for every one hostage returned by Hamas. Other exchanges have involved multiple Palestinians for each Israeli. That seems like bargaining. So why did Hamas take hostages in the first place? and why haven't they returned them? How would you like to be a hostage? Your comment seems glib.
Did you not know or have you already forgotton that for every hostage Israel realease, they immediately took three more from the general population? Did you not know or have you already forgotten that Israel actually held more hostages after the exchange than before? Finally, why didn't you read what the person you're replying to wrote and give them the courtesy of responding to what they actually said?
Not hard stuff, Tuffy.
"Oh come on. This isn't complicated. It's because these immediate ceasefire resolutions never demand that Hamas immediately release its hostages. That's a loud tell that the resolution backers aren't really serious about any kind of fairminded solution."
That doesn't stand up to reason.
The US has for decades blocked just about every UN resolution that requires action by or that is critical of Israel. That in this instance there were Israeli hostages involved when we, once again, blocked a UN resolution that requires action by Israel doesn't mean the lack of release of the hostages was the reason that we, once again, blocked a UN resolution that requires action by Israel. Not any more than my having ribs for dinner last night is the reason the sun rose this morning.
A more relevant question would be, if a similar situation arose regarding a country we were neutral about, would we veto a similar resolution?
While we're not at all neutral about it, suppose North Korea launched an attack on South Korea, killing a lot of people and taking more hostage, and South Korea launched a retaliatory attack that leveled most of the buildings in North Korea, cut off all aid to an already at risk population, destroyed all of the water and sewage infrastructure in North Korea, and killed 1.3% of North Korea's population and wounded another 3.0% -- would we then block a UN resolution that requires a ceasefire if it didn't include a demand that the hostages be released?
Completely counterfactual, but my guess is that we wouldn't.
I think the reason we blocked the resolution is that we give Israel special treatment generally, and this instance is no exception.
In your hypothetical, the South Koreans would not be Koreans, but some Pacific Islanders who claimed that their ancestors lived there thousands of years ago (with a grain of truth), and during the era of Japanese rule over Korea were invited to colonize, to which the actual people living there couldn’t prevent because of Japanese military might. Then after WWI the victorious Japanese declared that the southern 55% of Korea was a new PI state, which was even before its birth expelling Koreans across its borders….
Get the picture of the immensity of what you left out is? The surest sign of a Zionist is to observe them resetting history every time a Palestinian punches back.
Pfft. The U.S. has been vetoing U.N. resolutions regarding Israel for 50 years.
I see a combination of factors:
1. Deterrence and siege warfare tactics, the two country alliance itself wanting to brutally hurt Hamas and Gaza. This is what the military schools teach to do. Use aid as leverage and keep the adversaries weaker in any kind of support.
2. Fear of offending AIPAC in an election year and setting off a shock in Jewish voters. George HW Bush lost a quarter of the Jewish vote by pressing too hard on West Bank settlements. It's possible Muslim voters will punish Biden just as similarly though.
3. The reported involvement of UN aid workers in the assault of Israeli women, which is difficult to confirm but similar to contractor sexual violence in Afghanistan and other places.
4. The classic Orientalism that "Arab life is cheap" and we can just "mow the lawn" every now and then, in other words, the successful "emptying" of the land of indigenous people.
No one seems to want to address the real problem...any Resolution needs to call for the end of Hamas, militarily and within Gaza's civil life.
The Nazi's did not keep a political position within Germany after the war, nor did the Tojo government in Japan...we ultimate hung Tojo, as we executed much of the German government.
I a surprised that the Hamas health Ministry is still collecting data...they should be under arrest. No arm of the Hamas governance should be allowed to exist.
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I grant you the additional problem is that the majority of Palestinians still support Hamas...further, the only solution the general population stands willing to accept is one unitary state, no borders, citizenship equally for all.
This may sound good to American ears...but it is a false promise in the Middle East and must be completely discarded.
To answer Kevin, this is why we keep vetoing these Resolutions...they don't do what is necessary in outlawing Hamas and enforce a repudiation of the Hamas charter.. I know that this is a big ask from me, but there you have it. Best Wishes, Traveller
It seems odd to me that when Palestinians sue they're supposed to lose, when they vote they're supposed to lose, when they fight they're also supposed to lose, but you see yourself as impartial.
MacArthur allowed most of the Tojo government to continue in their positions and even to soft peddle their role in the war.
You want to make Hamas go away? Create circumstances in which Palestinian citizens have some hope for the future. Fail to do that and you get a new Hamas, just like the old Hamas. A UN resolution will get rid of Hamas about as well as it would get rid of Israel.
Also, the majority of Palestinians do not support Hamas. Even the majority of Gazans don't support them.
Yes. And by the way, deNazification wasn't as complete as it should have been, either. Occupiers need bureaucrats to keep the services getting to the population. Unless your purpose is ethnic cleansing, which can be facilitated by denying services. Say, by destroying housing stock, interrupting water and electricity supplies, hampering delivery of food and medicine ....
The US let the emperor remain, even while knowing he had a strong hand in the war.
We don't even have to look that far away. What happened to the Irgun and the Lehi? They were incorporated into the IDF. And Yitzhak Shamir, two-term prime minister of Isreal was an ex-leader of Lehi.
Your bigotry is demonstrated by the fact that the loss of innocent Palestinian lives doesn't even register with you.
Really? It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Joe Biden's thoughts about Israel ossified in the Golda Meir era?
And . . . the US has no leverage over Israel? $ to $15 billion of military aid is not leverage? The US does not USE its leverage or even credibly threaten to do so. Netanyahu is well aware of this which largely accounts for his attempts to influence elections here. But on this side of the Atlantic, people largely turn a blind eye. Israel is the only country that regularly commits war crimes, and has done so since 1967, without suffering any real consequences for it. That's due to us.
Exactly right, KD.
I think the reason why we keep vetoing Gaza resolutions is that, as people have said, it's been US policy for 50 years to veto resolutions that the Israeli government doesn't like. Nobody with the weight to change that has pushed to change it.
Trump and Biden are the nominees for president. That is why.
A blow to the mouth for evey veto has always been Likud policy.
Of course, Hamas has offered to release prisoners during a cease-fire, but Israel won't reciprocate.
They just aren't interested in the prisoners.
And it's bullshit calling them hostages when no one is calling the actual children taken by the IDF hostages.
Exactly! Israel's stated aim is to destory Hamas. The citizens of Israel may care about the hostages/prisoners but it's clear that the Israeli government doesn't.
Did anyone actually bother to *check* whether the resolution did or did not call for the immediate release of the hostages?
Here is what the UN website has to say:
"If adopted, the resolution — presented by Algeria — would have also demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as reiterated its call for unhindered humanitarian access."
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15595.doc.htm
I was very sceptical that Kevin was right about that, but did not take the time to do what you did.
Thanks for going to the source.
The US has plenty of immediate leverage: without us supplying bombs and ammunition, Israel can't wage war.
This is ridiculous. Hamas is not a state and Israel is. Otherwise we wouldn't even be speaking of 100+ hostages, but call the military ones POWs; by contrast the 7000+ Palestinian civilians Israel rounded up in Gaza and the West Bank would be called hostages and not detainees.
Hamas not being a state or a government (because Israel wouldn't allow it), the UN goes as far as it can when it demands the release of hostages in general terms, which it repeatedly did. The US isn't vetoing SC resolutions for semantic reasons but to support Israel to the full genocide hilt. It does, though, use semantics as an excuse.
Some posters have commented on my analogy to post war countries after WWII. Their points are well taken in the sense that many of the those states bureaucracies remained staffed by some former Nazi's and Imperial Japanese functionaries...
True enough, but German health care system wasn't called National Socialism Health care, and as for Japan, it became under US occupation more US-like than the US itself.
We also had partisan help in hanging Benito Mussolini by his heels dead....
Israel has had no similar help from Gazians...they know that Hostages have been held in hospitals, they know that their neighbors' apartment is being used for war or holding hostages...
The only reason there might be Palestinian deaths in Rafah is because Hamas is entrenched there still.
Nothing with the name of Hamas may be allowed to remain, and there should be a total repudiation of the Hamas Charter for there to be peace in Gaza.
Best Wishes, Traveller
Likud needs to be annihilated rather than Hamas to stop the killing and allow peace in Palestine. Likud is the racist killing machine mimicking the genocidal Nazis it claims to oppose with state violence.
Read this and weep https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-extreme-ambitions-of-west-bank-settlers. This good, Jehovah-fearing settler makes no bones about what the gameplan really is:
So the people whose land they're taking are at least being well-compensated, right? Or at least, adequately compensated? Uh:
Guess it never happened then. Well, both sides said things they later regretted, but at least all that unpleasantness is in the past. Look on the bright side: now that it's over, we can move on and work on civil governance going forward, basic political representation, etc. Right? Uh:
Well, at least they'll have some recognized inalienable rights, surely? Maybe not:
There's more there, much more, but I think you get the gist, namely that they make for extremely unpleasant neighbors. And disasterous for _your_ property value to boot.
Yes, the settlement problem is severe....not all of the land settlers currently are on will be returned, t he 1967 borders is past being revived....but many settlers will have to be removed....but none of this is about Hamas...these are different problems. Traveller
Effectiveness of UN Resolutions. Shames em right to their knees, just like sanctions.
btw Were there any UN resolutions that condemned Hamas terror or missile attacks BEFORE October?