No immediate action from UNSC after emergency meeting on Hamas attack
U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood made clear the U.S. is focused on condemning Hamas for an “unprovoked invasion and the terrorist attacks” but no immediate action was taken after the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting behind closed doors on Sunday.
That’s according to Politico, Ukrinform reports.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood said “a good number of countries” condemned the Hamas attack but not all UNSC members. He told reporters they could probably figure out one of them.
Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told The Associated Press the Americans tried to say during the meeting that Russia isn’t condemning the attacks, but “that’s untrue.”
“It was in my comments,” he said. “We condemn all the attacks on civilians.”
He added Russia believes it is “important to stop the fighting immediately, to go to a cease-fire and to meaningful negotiations, which were stalled for decades.”
Chinese envoy Zhang Jun voiced a similar position ahead of the UNSC meeting, saying Beijing condemns all attacks on civilians, though he did not mention Hamas.
“What’s really important is to prevent the further escalation of the situation and further casualties of civilians,” Zhang said. “What’s also important is really to come back to the two-state solution.”
Wood made clear the U.S. is focused on condemning Hamas for “this unprovoked invasion and the terrorist attacks,” and said Hamas must end its “violent terrorist activity against the Israeli people.”
Asked if it wasn’t important to restart talks on a two-state solution and end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he replied: “There’ll be time for that. The time right now is we’ve got to deal with the hostage taking, the violence that is going on that’s being perpetrated by Hamas, and we’ve got to deal with first things first.”
As Ukrinform reported earlier, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine says the whole world understands who, through their actions, could mastermind a terrorist attack by the Hamas group on Israel.
The president emphasized that terrorists must lose, no matter where they launch their rockets and no matter who they attack.