As the death toll rises in Gaza, the Biden administration is blocking the release of a United Nations Security Council statement calling for a ceasefire.
Reuters reports that the administration has blocked the effort because they believe it will impede their behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts. They have repeatedly called for both sides to deescalate. “We believe Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal measures of freedom, security, dignity and prosperity,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki this week. “U.S. officials in recent weeks have spoken candidly with Israeli officials about how evictions of Palestinian families who have lived for years, sometimes decades, in their homes, and how demolitions of these homes, work against our common interests and achieving a solution to the conflict.”
During his press briefing yesterday State Department spokesperson Ned Price was asked about the UN statement by the AP’s Matt Lee, but he wouldn’t address the issue directly:
Price: Matt, as we – as I said yesterday, we want to see to it that steps, whether they emanate from the Israeli Government, the Palestinian Authority, or the UN Security Council, serve not to escalate or provoke but to de-escalate.
Lee: So the short, one-word answer is no, you haven’t dropped your opposition to it?
Price: We have —
Lee: Has the Council come out with a statement? I’m sorry, I may have missed it.
Price: We have – we have continued to call in multiple fora for de-escalation and to see to it to do what we can to ensure that no actor takes provocative actions.
Lee: I get it. You don’t —
Price: We don’t – we don’t want to see provocations. The provocations that we have seen have resulted in a lamentable, deeply lamentable, loss of life —
Lee: Got it.
Price: – of Israeli life and of Palestinian life.
Lee: But to give me a one-word answer, yes or no: Have you dropped your objection to the Security Council presidential statement on the situation?
Price: Matt, as you know as well as anyone does, private sessions of the UN Security Council….are not – are not sessions that we read out. But again, our message continues to be one of de-escalation. We do not want to see any actor, be it a government or be it an intergovernmental body, take an action that could serve to escalate rather than de-escalate.
Fourteen of the 15 Council members were reportedly in favor of releasing the statement, but it was held up by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The Council members from Norway, Estonia, France and Ireland ended up releasing their own joint statement on the situation.
“We condemn the firing of rockets from Gaza against civilian populations in Israel by Hamas and other militant groups which is totally unacceptable and must stop immediately,” it reads. “The large numbers of civilian casualties, including children, from Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, and of Israeli fatalities from rockets launched from Gaza, are both worrying and unacceptable.”
On Wednesday Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin declared that U.S. support for Israel was “ironclad.”
Dammit!!! What a load of US horse manure. Didn’t much appreciate the pissant, mealy- mouthed joint statement, either. Hamas did not just start firing rockets!!!
Here’s a link to a very good article by Joshua Leifer in The Guardian this a.m. :
“US funds make Israel’s bombardment of Gaza possible. When will they be halted?
The headlines speak mainly of “clashes”, “conflict”, and “casualties on both sides”. The politicians recite bromides about Israel’s “right to defend itself”– a right that Palestinians seemingly do not have. The US government calls for “all parties to deescalate”, with no acknowledgment that it is US funds – $3.8bn a year – that, in part, make Israel’s bombardment of Gaza possible. This is the familiar American routine when Israel goes to war. …”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/13/us-funds-make-israels-bombardment-of-gaza-possible-when-will-they-be-halted
Eid Mubarak.
The words spoken by Biden including the usual “Israel has the right to defend itself”, is indeed the green light to Israel that they can do whatever the hell they want, even massacring innocent civilians. We have heard these words many times coming from all other Presidents, at one time or the other, giving Israel the green light to kill with impunity every time they mow the lawn. The world does not believe what the US keeps saying when it comes to Israel. We have no credibility at all. The Biden Administration knows jolly well that it was Netanyahu’s goons that attacked worshippers in the premises of a Mosque, attacking them, and injuring hundreds, and those evictions are racially discriminating policies, yet they behave like only Hamas is to be blamed. Despite the hasbara trolls blaming this all on Hamas, anyone with half a brain should know those rockets are the result of the attack on the Mosque.
Where are Israel’s dear Arab buddies? Are they okay with their Mosque being desecrated?
It is time for the US to stop sending this rogue nation (pretending they are a democracy) those billions of dollars and weapons. The world is now blaming the US for making that out of control monster. There is only one person who is to be blamed for this, that would be Israel’s crooked PM.
BDS is the only way.
Ah, the Israel Lobby, Biden administration branch, just another lickspittle for Israel, constantly beating the drum for Israel, no matter its war crimes against Palestinians.
See Walt and Mearsheimer’s book “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”. (2006), which evoked howls of protest from Israel’s supporters, who of course all called it antisemitic. Haim Saban on the Democratic side says Israel is his issue and gave $4 mil to Biden, just as Sheldon Adelson did on the Republican side to Trump.
Biden has long been an Israel sycophant, saying he’s a Zionist and loves Bibi. Biden, Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken complain about repressive regimes in China and Russia, but out of the other side of their mouths say they’re resolutely against the civil society Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement, which seeks civil and political rights for Palestinians and oppose Israel’s war crimes. Talk about hypocrisy! But, drip, drip, drip, things are slowly changing as witnessed by the recent Human Rights Watch report on Israeli apartheid.
Typo in the third paragraph— the AP reporter is Matt Lee, not Matt Price.