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The rift between Israel and the United States widened dramatically Monday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called off a trip by a top-level delegation to Washington to protest the Biden administration’s refusal to block a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire to the war in the Gaza Strip.
The resolution passed in New York on a 14-0 vote after Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield broke with past practice and declined to exercise the U.S. veto.
Mr. Netanyahu said the delegation was called back because the Biden administration was “retreating” from its “principled position” that any cease-fire resolution must include language demanding the release of an estimated 100 hostages taken by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
The resolution text called for “an immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire.” The Netanyahu government has consistently said any cease-fire would have the practical effect of allowing Hamas to rearm and regroup after it sparked the latest round of fighting with its Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people.
As Mr. Netanyahu fumed, representatives of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority praised the Security Council vote. Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour said it “must be a turning point.”
“This must lead to saving lives on the ground,” Mr. Mansour told the council.
The Israeli delegation had been dispatched to Washington for senior-level talks on U.S. and Israeli differences over a looming Israeli military attack on Hamas forces in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. President Biden asked Mr. Netanyahu to send the interagency team when the two men talked by phone on March 18.
Mr. Biden and his aides have said they see no way the attack can proceed without massive casualties to the more than 1 million Palestinian civilians living or taking refuge in the city from fighting elsewhere in the densely populated enclave.
It was not immediately clear what brought about the shift in the U.S. position at the United Nations.
On Friday, Ms. Thomas-Greenfield argued that the proposed text “fails to support sensitive diplomacy in the region. Worse, it could actually give Hamas an excuse to walk away from the deal on the table.”
During the debate Monday, she seemed to suggest that the text was still short of U.S. expectations, but the Biden administration supported “some of the critical objectives in this nonbinding resolution.”
At the White House, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed the Israeli delegation’s cancellation but said the U.S. abstention at the United Nations was not a shift in policy.
“There is no reason for this to be seen as some sort of escalation,” he said. “Nothing has changed about our policy. We still want to see a cease-fire. We still want to get hostages all over. And we still want to see more humanitarian assistance get in to the people of Gaza.”
Mr. Kirby said Mr. Biden is “perplexed” by the cancellation of the trip by top officials. He said the nonbinding resolution doesn’t affect Israel’s ability to wage war on Hamas.
Gallant warning
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was in Washington on a separate trip for senior-level talks this week and appeared to be proceeding with his meetings with U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and others.
Defending the determination to push into Rafah, he noted that Hamas still holds about 100 hostages taken in the Oct. 7 assault and warned that Israel’s other enemies in the region, including the Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, would be emboldened if the campaign is cut short.
“We have no moral right to stop the war while there are still hostages held in Gaza,” Mr. Gallant said before his meeting with Mr. Sullivan. “The lack of a decisive victory in Gaza may bring us closer to a war in the north.”
Israel Defense Forces officials said Palestinian militants in central Gaza had unleashed a salvo of rockets at the southern city of Ashdod, the first time in two months the city had been targeted. Israel says its campaign has decimated Hamas forces, but the militants still have been able to conduct a reduced but steady campaign of rocket barrages more than five months after the war began.
The U.S. vetoed three previous Security Council resolutions demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, most recently on Feb. 20. That Arab-backed resolution was supported by 13 council members with one abstention, reflecting the overwhelming support for a cease-fire.
Russia and China vetoed a U.S.-sponsored resolution in late October calling for pauses in the fighting to deliver aid, the protection of civilians and a halt to arming Hamas.
Former President Donald Trump, who has claimed to be the “most pro-Israel president ever,” took a shot at Mr. Biden’s handling of the crisis and defended Israel’s campaign against Hamas in an interview published Monday by the conservative Israel Hayom newspaper. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged that Israel risked increasing isolation if the war drags on and the civilian casualties continue to mount.
“We’ve got to get to peace, we can’t have this going on,” Mr. Trump said at one point. “And I will say, Israel has to be very careful because you’re losing a lot of the world, you’re losing a lot of support. You have to finish up, you have to get the job done.”
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.
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