On Monday the UN Security Council passed resolution 2728 by 14 votes, demanding “an immediate ceasefire” during Ramadan and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”.
The US abstained. The British government is under pressure to explain its vote for the ceasefire. After four failed previous attempts, this is the first ceasefire call by the council since Israel began its Gaza war on Hamas. In the longest war in the Middle East since 1948, the Gaza health authorities claim more than 30,000 people (including, it must be remembered, Hamas fighters) have been killed and 1.7 million displaced. Further military action in Rafah will worsen the already acute humanitarian tragedy.
The appearance of balance in the resolution is misleading, as shown by Hamas welcoming it. Hamas is not about to release all hostages immediately, convinced it can get its military reprieve through intense international pressure on Israel.
Because the ceasefire call is not conditional on the hostages’ release, Israel is unlikely to halt efforts to destroy Hamas as a security threat, dismantle its terror infrastructure and eliminate its political power. The world correctly interprets the resolution as essentially anti-Israeli and one, moreover, that shows softening US support for Israel.
The open US-Israel split and public spat between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with an angry Israel cancelling planned talks in Washington starting on Tuesday, is the result of growing divergence between the two on how best to minimise civilian casualties while still pursuing Hamas. But it also reflects waning support for Israel among younger Americans and, in an election year, the political reality of a growing pro-Palestinian constituency among Democrats.
Henry Kissinger commented apropos of the Vietnam War that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy but to be America’s friend is fatal”. The UN Security Council is the world’s only body with the authority to pass resolutions that are legally binding on all countries, including those that voted against it. Its five permanent members (the P5) are China, France, Russia, Britain and the US. To pass, a resolution must secure at least nine votes and avoid even one negative vote from the P5. This is the so-called veto.
Historically and to the consternation and anger of many, the US veto has enabled Israel to ignore UN resolutions, something that has helped to offset the obsessive focus on Israel by the UN’s Human Rights Council based in Geneva. The Security Council does have the power to authorise coercive measures, including sanctions and ultimately the use of force, against non-compliance with its demands. It’s unimaginable that any such attempt would not be vetoed by the US. But Biden could suspend arms deliveries if relations continue to deteriorate.
Let’s recall some uncontestable facts. There was a ceasefire in force when invading hordes of Hamas fighters attacked Israel in October. If it were not for those brutal attacks, massacres and abductions, Israeli forces would not be in Gaza today. A ferocious Israeli retaliation after the initial shock and awe was a predictable certainty.
Hamas would have known and anticipated that, believing large-scale civilian killings would inflame Palestinian, Arab and world opinion against Israel.
It also would have calculated that Palestinian civilian casualties would be grossly inflated because its terror infrastructure is embedded in and beneath densely populated residential localities, schools and even the chief UN agency in the Gaza Strip.
The high number of hostages abducted and hidden amid civilians in Gaza increases the risks to civilians and complicates Israeli rescue efforts. In further violations of international humanitarian law, Hamas refuses to provide the hostages’ names and information on those dead and still alive, and refuses the Red Cross access to them to deliver medical supplies, confirm their locations and check on their welfare.
There is no plausible pathway to a self-sustaining peace with Hamas left intact as a fighting and political force. How should Israel fight among dense civilian populations in Gaza? If Israel avoids going into Rafah, Hamas survives and wins. Such an outcome will also be seen as victory for Iran, China and Russia over the West.
If Israel does agree to an immediate and sustained ceasefire, who will guarantee compliance by Hamas, especially when its spokesmen have promised to repeat October 7-like attacks again and again, and demands continue unabated for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea”? This last demand is a call for ethnic cleansing by destroying Israel as the world’s only Jewish state and enforcing a seamless Jew-free zone in the region in its place.
After their tragic history, Jews are inclined to believe enemies who threaten them with genocide.
Hamas exercises military and governmental functions to rule over the Gaza Strip but is not answerable for its acts of governance to the people of Gaza or to international institutions. October 7 was stark proof that Hamas means to act on its commitment to eliminate the state of Israel and expel all Jews from the region. It has openly and repeatedly threatened to repeat October 7 again and again. Which countries will promise to send their troops to defend Israel the next time it is attacked by Hamas or Hezbollah?
Conversely, the war could end speedily if Hamas released all hostages, handed in its weapons and gave up those who planned and carried out the attacks.
Resolution 2728 is not double standards. Rather, as Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post said in 2014: “This is a singular standard for Israel.” Hamas has shown itself willing to massacre more than 1000 Israeli civilians and prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of Palestinian lives in its quest to delegitimise Israel in world opinion.
This is why it’s perverse to hold Israel solely to blame for the mass civilian carnage. Instead, the finger of criminality for the burden of civilian casualties and humanitarian suffering must be pointed directly at Hamas, which launched the attacks to start a war that Israel neither sought nor wanted.
Israel was the victim of the attacks. The world should neither forget nor forgive.
Ramesh Thakur is a Brownstone Institute senior scholar, emeritus professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University and a former UN assistant secretary-general.
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