The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) passed a non-binding resolution on Friday demanding Israel be held accountable for potential war crimes and crimes against humanity. It was the first resolution UNHRC has passed since the beginning of the war in Gaza.
The resolution, introduced by Pakistan on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, passed with 28 votes in favor, 13 abstentions, and 6 votes against, including the United States. The Palestinian delegation and its supporters cheered and applauded when the resolution was passed.
The Palestinians were not magnanimous in victory, complaining that too many Western states still voted against the condemnation of Israel. Germany joined the United States in voting against the resolution, while France and Japan abstained.
“There have been calls for accountability across the world, but that position changes when we’re talking about Israel,” complained Palestinian U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Khiraishi.
Israeli Ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar, on the other hand, denounced the resolution as “a stain for the Human Rights Council and for the U.N. as a whole.”
Shahar said UNHRC has “long abandoned the Israeli people, and long defended Hamas.”
“According to the resolution before you today, Israel has no right to protect its people, while Hamas has every right to murder and torture innocent Israelis. A vote ‘Yes’ is a vote for Hamas,” she said.
“I don’t know if any of you counted, but Israel appears in the resolution 59 times. 59 times. Hamas does not appear at all,” she told reporters before leaving the U.N. for the day.
The UNHRC resolution astonishingly did not mention Hamas by name nor condemn it for the October 7 atrocities or its subsequent activities in Gaza — including its now-proven use of hospitals as weapons depots and command centers.
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The resolution’s sole acknowledgement of the brutal tactics employed by Hamas were a mild condemnation of rockets fired at civilian targets in Israel — a war crime Hamas and its Iran-backed allies perpetrate on an almost daily basis — and a call for “the immediate release of all hostages,” without mentioning who they are, or who is holding them prisoner.
U.S. Ambassador Michele Taylor said these omissions were the reasons why the Biden administration could not support the resolution, although she still went out of her way to criticize Israel, in keeping with the administration’s increasingly critical posture after the airstrike by Israel that killed seven foreign aid workers in Gaza in Monday.
“The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to de-conflict military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties and to ensure humanitarian actors can carry out their essential mission in safety,” Taylor said.
“That has not happened and, in just six months, more humanitarians have been killed in this conflict than in any war of the modern era,” she claimed.
The text of the UNHRC resolution originally accused Israel of “genocide,” language the Palestinian delegation to the U.N. constantly uses, but those references were softened to an expression of “grave concern at statements by Israeli officials amounting to incitement to genocide.”
The resolution demanded an “immediate ceasefire,” called on Israel to refrain from “any large-scale military operations against the city of Rafah,” and urged U.N. member states to “prevent the continued forcible transfer of Palestinians within and from Gaza.”
The text called for all countries to “cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel,” in order to “prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights.”
The resolution accused Israel of using “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in Gaza,” without mentioning Israel’s allegations that Hamas terrorists have been looting aid trucks.
The resolution additionally demanded Israel “immediately lift its blockade on the Gaza Strip and all other forms of collective punishment.”
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