Prospects dim for Gaza truce as US vows to veto UN resolution
Brazilian president accuses Israel of committing ‘genocide’
Prospects for a cease-fire in Gaza dimmed Sunday after the United States signaled it would veto the latest push for a UN Security Council resolution and mediator Qatar acknowledged that separate truce talks have hit an impasse.
Efforts to pause the over four-month-old war languish as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to reject international appeals to spare Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where around 1.4 million people have sought refuge.
The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Sunday that a total of 127 people were killed in Israel’s strikes in just 24 hours.
So far, nearly 29,000 people have been killed by Israel’s attacks on Gaza.
Egypt, which controls the Rafah border crossing from Gaza, has repeatedly warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians into the Sinai desert.
Even if a temporary truce deal is struck, Netanyahu said the ground invasion of Rafah will go ahead.
Next week’s possible United Nations Security Council vote appears unlikely to advance the cease-fire effort, with Washington already voicing opposition.
“The United States does not support action on this draft resolution,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted.”
Algeria’s draft resolution seeks an immediate humanitarian cease-fire, but Thomas-Greenfield said the United States instead supports a truce-for-hostages deal that would pause fighting for six weeks.
Attacks on hospitals
Israel’s military on Sunday said troops in the southern city of Khan Younis are still operating “in Nasser Hospital”.
The ongoing raid followed a week-long siege which has left the hospital “not functional anymore” even though 200 patients remain there, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on social media platform X.
Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra also said Nasser Hospital was out of service, after troops had turned it “into a military barracks”.
He said one more person had died due to lack of oxygen because power has been out for three days, bringing the total of such deaths to seven.
‘Genocide’ in Gaza
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused Israel on Sunday of committing “genocide” against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and compared its actions to Adolf Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip isn’t a war, it’s a genocide,” Lula told reporters in Addis Ababa where he was attending an African Union summit.
“It’s not a war of soldiers against soldiers. It’s a war between a highly prepared army and women and children,” added the veteran leftist.
“What’s happening in the Gaza Strip with the Palestinian people hasn’t happened at any other moment in history. Actually, it has happened: when Hitler decided to kill the Jews.”
Lula, who met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh Saturday on the sidelines of the summit, reiterated his call for a two-state solution to the conflict, with Palestine “definitively recognized as a full and sovereign state.”
‘We are under
occupation’
“Palestine is ready. We have the institutions, capabilities, but our serious problem is we are under occupation,” Shtayyeh told the Munich Security Conference. “We are under Israeli occupation and we need it to end.”
When asked whether bringing Hamas into the broader Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) platform would alienate international partners, he said Hamas was an integral part of the Palestinian political arena.
“In order for Hamas to be a member of the PLO there has to be prerequisites that Hamas has to accept — the political platform of the PLO, an understanding on the issue of resistance; we are calling for popular resistance and nothing else,” he said.
“Russia has invited all Palestinian factions who will be meeting on the 26th of this month in Moscow. We will see if Hamas is ready to come to the ground with us,” Shtayyeh said.