Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the measure an abstention from US in UN ceasefire vote of “a retreat from the consistent American position since the beginning of the war” and said that abstention ‘hurts the war effort as well as the effort to free the hostages.’ Netanyahu announced that he would no longer send an Israeli delegation to Washington to hold talks with American officials about the Rafah operation — a public rebuke of President Biden, who had requested the meetings.
The White House said it was perplexed by Israel’s decision to cancel the visit. A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, called this decision “somewhat surprising and unfortunate.”
The U.S. did not vote for the resolution because it did not condemn the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and because of other concerns about the text, Miller said. “But other aspects were consistent with our long-term position,” Miller said.
The resolution was intensely negotiated until the last minute. The US called for a change in text that replaced the ‘permanent ceasefire’ in the war between Israel and Hamas with a ‘lasting ceasefire’, according to diplomats, and wanted language that called on both sides to create conditions that would allow a sustained truce.
Message
“The crucial variable is that the Biden administration is obviously not satisfied with Israel’s military position right now, and allowing this resolution to pass was a relatively mild way of signaling its concern,” said Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the Center for International Crisis studies.
