The UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on Hamas to agree to a three-phase hostage-for-ceasefire proposal outlined by Joe Biden, the first time the body has approved a comprehensive peace deal to end the war in Gaza.
A Hamas statement said the group welcomed the resolution, although it was unclear whether it meant the Gaza leadership accepted the ceasefire plan.
The position of the Israeli government is also ambiguous. It formally accepted the peace plan, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to distance himself from it, and his coalition shifted to the right from the submission of the proposal.
Fourteen council members voted in favor of Monday’s resolution, none against, and only Russia abstained on the US-drafted resolution, which calls for an initial exchange of elderly, sick or female hostages for Palestinian detainees held by Israel during the initial six-week ceasefire on the fire.
The ceasefire will translate into a permanent end to hostilities and the release of all hostages in a second phase to be negotiated by the two sides and the mediators of the US, Qatar and Egypt. The third phase will involve the initiation of a large-scale reconstruction effort.
The resolution called on Hamas to accept the agreement and called on both sides “to fully implement its terms without delay and without conditions.”
The US has been seeking UN approval for the proposal ever since introduced by Biden on May 31. He won the support of the Palestinian mission with a clause that the initial six-week ceasefire would be extended while negotiations continued in a second phase.
The resolution said the US, Qatar and Egypt would “work to ensure that negotiations continue until all agreements are reached and phase two can begin.”
Palestinian President Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the Palestinian Authority leadership would accept any resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza that preserves Palestinian territorial integrity.
Palestinian support for the US resolution made it much more difficult diplomatically for Russia or China to veto it. Since the Gaza war began in October, the Security Council has struggled to find consensus amid deep polarization. He agreed to a humanitarian resolution including a temporary ceasefire, but this is the first time he has accepted a comprehensive peace.
“Over the past eight months, this council has been often divisive, and the world has taken notice with understandable disappointment,” US UN envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield said after the vote. “But there is another side to this story, because today we adopted a fourth resolution on this conflict.
“Colleagues, today we voted for peace,” she declared.
The text stated that Israel had already accepted the terms of the ceasefire, although this claim has been increasingly questioned as the country’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made a series of skeptical comments about it, claiming that the US had uncovered only parts of the plan, and insisting that any proposal for a permanent ceasefire without the complete destruction of Hamas’ military and governance capacity is a “non-starter”.
The resignation over the weekend of centrist Prime Minister Benny Gantz made Netanyahu even more dependent on far-right members of his coalition, who strongly oppose the deal.
Hamas made positive comments when Biden first announced the deal and said it welcomed the Security Council vote, but has yet to give a formal response to the ceasefire proposal. The unusual show of relative unity by the deeply divided Security Council is helping to put pressure on both sides to reach an agreement, even though both have shown themselves to be far more swayed by domestic constituencies and leaders’ personal interests than by international public opinion. opinion.
Prospects for a hostage and ceasefire deal were significantly complicated by Saturday’s Israeli attack on Gaza to rescue four hostages, which killed 274 Palestinians.
One of the late changes made to the US draft resolution was designed to make it more acceptable to Israel. It said the Security Council rejected any attempt to change Gaza’s demographic or geographic boundaries, but omitted wording from the earlier version that specifically rejected the creation of a buffer zone around the coastal strip.
