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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Gaza: Americans veto call for peace!

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza this week – the fourth time it has used its veto to shield the Zionist entity from UN action. And in the Netherlands the International Criminal Court at The Hague (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing him of crimes against humanity and war crimes over the war in Gaza. The court also issued arrest warrants for Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Mohammed Deif, who is said to have died in an Israeli air-raid in Gaza earlier in the year.

Fourteen of the 15 Council members, including People’s China and the Russian Federation, voted in favour of a motion demanding that the war in Gaza “must end immediately, unconditionally and permanently and all remaining hostages must be immediately and unconditionally released”. But it was blocked by the Americans. Their mouthpiece at the UN pathetically claimed that the resolution had “abandoned” the necessity for there to be “a linkage between a ceasefire and the release of hostages” and accused the other 14 council members, including Britain and France, of cynically rejecting attempts at reaching a compromise.

Russia’s UN envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council that: “It is shocking that the US has vetoed an effort to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis. Though perhaps we should not be surprised about it.” The draft text rejected “any effort to starve Palestinians” and demanded immediate access to humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza.

The USA is fully responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip, Nebenzia said, adding that Russia will continue to call for an end to violence against Palestinians and continue “calling out the abuses and hypocrisy by the United States when it comes to settling the situation”.

After the vote China’s UN ambassador said people could not but ask “do Palestinian lives mean nothing?”. The French said international humanitarian law was being trampled on and the only response should have been an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

The White House, as usual, says it’s tirelessly working to stop the carnage, but most Arabs stopped believing anything Biden says a long time ago.

Hamas’s acting leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, says that there will be no hostages-for-prisoners deal with Israel without a cease-fire and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the Palestinian enclave. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem says there must be a complete ceasefire and “protection of Lebanon’s sovereignty” in any new truce with Israel.

Meanwhile the war goes on, with the Arab resistance fighting against all odds against the Israeli aggressors who are stepping up their terror bombing of Gaza and Lebanon while inciting Zionist violence in the West Bank to drive the Palestinians off their land to make way for more Zionist settlers. A shopping centre in the heart of Tel Aviv was set ablaze when it was hit by a Hezbollah rocket last week while further waves of resistance missiles temporarily forced the suspension of all flights at Ben Gurion international airport.

The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, a major force in the Gaza resistance, is calling for a global response to the American veto and the Zionist war-crimes.

“The American veto necessitates a massive popular revolution by the nations and the free people of the world in response to the American crimes against our people. It calls for mass demonstrations in the streets and the besieging of Zionist-American embassies in all the capitals of the world, especially in the Arab and Islamic countries,” they said. “The [Zionist] occupation state stands against the truth, contradicts the concept of justice, and clashes with human values, and the brutal terrorism that is internationally supported sustains the occupation’s existence.”