The United States appears increasingly isolated on the international stage because of its perceived one-sided support for Israel, Russia’s U.N. ambassador said this week.
Vasily Nebenzya made the assertion after the United States voted against two U.N. draft resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the besieged Gaza Strip.
“The American side has essentially given [Israel] a license to kill and now bears full responsibility for every new victim of the conflict,” Mr. Nebenzya said.
Home to some 2.3 million Palestinians, the Gaza Strip has remained the target of relentless Israeli airstrikes for the past 10 weeks, since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 and taking hundreds more hostage.
Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas, has said that more than 18,600 people, mostly women and children, have been killed by the airstrikes and an accompanying ground offensive.
On Dec. 12, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
The resolution was endorsed by 153 countries, more than three-quarters of the assembly’s 193 members.
Israel and the United States voted against the proposal, along with Austria, the Czech Republic, Guatemala, Liberia, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, and Paraguay.
Twenty-three countries—including the UK, Germany, Italy, and Ukraine—abstained from voting.
Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions aren’t binding.
After the vote, Mr. Nebenzya said that U.N. members who backed the resolution couldn’t be expected to “share the blame” for the ongoing bloodshed in Gaza.
Last week, the United States was the only country to veto a similar draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council.
Thirteen other Council members voted in favor, and the UK abstained.
The Security Council’s five permanent members (the United States, the UK, France, Russia, and China) have the right to veto resolutions, which are binding.
The vote followed a rare warning by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who cautioned the 15-member Council that the ongoing conflict threatened to “aggravate existing threats to international peace and security.”
Biden: Israel ‘Losing Support’
Washington frequently claims that Russia has been diplomatically isolated by its ongoing invasion of eastern Ukraine, which will soon enter its 23rd month.U.S. and other Western officials are quick to recall that 143 countries endorsed a General Assembly resolution last year denouncing Moscow’s “illegal annexation” of Ukrainian territory.
But with the United States standing alone in opposing calls for a Gaza ceasefire, the shoe now appears to be on the other foot.
At a Dec. 13 press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller was asked point-blank whether the United States felt “diplomatically isolated” as a result of its full-throated support for Israel.
“No; not at all,” Mr. Miller responded. “There is a long history of fairly overwhelming vote counts when it comes to resolutions that involve the state of Israel at the General Assembly.”
“This is by no means a first. It goes back a number of years; it goes back decades on a number of different subjects.”
Nevertheless, a day earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel, warned that it risked losing international support.
“Israel’s security can rest on the United States, but right now, it has more than the United States,” President Biden told contributors to his 2024 reelection campaign.
“It has Europe; it has most of the world,” he said.
“But they’re starting to lose that support by the indiscriminate bombing [of Gaza] that is taking place.”
President Biden also appeared to reiterate calls for a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict.
“You cannot say no [to a] Palestinian state,” he said.
Netanyahu: ‘Nothing Will Stop Us’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country had the “full backing” of the United States for its ongoing ground offensive in Gaza.In a Dec. 12 statement, he also asserted that Washington had, with its veto, successfully blocked “international pressure to stop the war.”
The following day, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to continue the military campaign against Gaza despite the mounting death toll and calls for a ceasefire.
“We’re continuing until the end, until victory, until Hamas is annihilated,” he said in broadcast remarks.
“I say this in the face ... of international pressures,” he added. “Nothing will stop us.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, meanwhile, has questioned President Biden’s apparent support for an eventual two-state solution.
“Based on the West’s current position, it has no interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he said in remarks to Russia’s parliament on Dec. 13.
“According to our information, the West—and Israel’s current leadership—opposes the unification of Gaza and the [Palestinian] West Bank, which is what the emergence of such a state would require.”
