Zimpapers Logo

BEIJING. – The US veto at the UN Security Council against a cease-fire has pushed the besieged enclave of Gaza to a “more dangerous situation,” China warned yesterday.

“China voted in favour of a UN Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza,” said Mao Ning, spokeswoman of China’s Foreign Ministry.

The US vetoed “it alone, pushing the situation in Gaza to a more dangerous situation,” he said.

“All relevant parties, including China, expressed strong disappointment,” said Mao.

The US Tuesday vetoed the latest attempt at the Council to demand an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the besieged Gaza Strip, where the official death toll is rapidly approaching 30,000.

The draft resolution put forward by Algeria received widespread support in the council, with 13 of its 15 member states voting in favour.

The US was the sole nation to vote against it, and as a permanent council member, its opposition killed the resolution. The UK, another permanent member, abstained.

China’s top envoy at the UN Zhang Jun said: “The outcome of today’s vote clearly shows that on the issue of a cease-fire to halt the fight in Gaza, it is not that the Security Council does not have an overwhelming consensus, but rather it is the exercise of veto by the United States that stifles the Council consensus.”​​​​​​​

“The US veto sends a wrong message, pushing the situation in Gaza into a more dangerous one,” he added.

Meanwhile, a UN special rapporteur on the right to food Israel has been using hunger as “weapon” in its attacks on the Gaza Strip,

Michael Fakhri said Israel wants to punish all Palestinians and it is “a genocide,” adding that Gaza has never experienced this level of hunger.

“Even before forces moved to Rafah, we were raising the alarm that every single person in Gaza was hungry and at least one-quarter of the population was starving, and that famine was imminent,” he said about the famine and the developments in Gaza under the Israeli attacks and blockade.

“Since then, two things have happened. First, several countries have decided not to fund the most important humanitarian agency in Gaza but all Palestinian refugees and that is under war. And second, now we see Israeli forces pressing into Rafah squeezing hundreds of thousands of people into such a small concentrated area.

Fakhri said at this point he is “running out of ways to describe inhumanity and the violence and the brutality.”

“Before we were saying famine is imminent. I would not be surprised by the end of the month that we will say that there is actually a full-blown famine,” he added.

Fakhri said aid reaching Gaza is not enough to sustain the population.

“The problem with starving people is that it is a long slow and painful violent. Which means we are going to see the impact of this for months, years and decades to come. Even if there is a cease-fire today, already the impact is affecting generations because so many children have been affected. So, the key thing to remember is that over 1 million children live in Gaza, and so their future is at stake. What we know is that children under fire — this is 335,000 children — are at the risk of permanent physical and cognitive impairment.”

“What is unique is we have never seen this degree of hunger, we have never seen an entire population like this. So, this is over 2.2 million people may go hungry so completely, so quickly,” he said. – Anadolu News Agency