Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Nebenzya: Are civilians in Ukraine more important than the ones in Palestine?

I want to ask the US representative a question – explain why you are against a ceasefire. Does this mean that the United States, as a permanent member of the Security Council, supports the doctrine of “total retaliation” in Gaza?

Where is your sympathy for civilians, which you so eloquently express at every meeting of the Council on Ukraine? And this is even though the lives of civilians in Ukraine are nowhere near as threatened as the Palestinians in Gaza. Or do you think only about those on the European continent, and no one in Washington cares about Palestinian lives? I would like to address the same questions to the rest of the Western delegations in the Council, which shamefully abstained on all the draft resolutions that we introduced that would have called for a ceasefire.

Colleagues, your “double standards” are more than obvious. The time has come to call things by their proper names: a humanitarian catastrophe of biblical proportions is unfolding in the occupied Palestinian territory – the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The death toll in the enclave has passed 8 thousand people, half of whom are children, women, and the elderly, more than 2 thousand people are under the rubble, half of whom are also children. More than 21 thousand people were wounded.

The number of internally displaced persons in Gaza has reached 1.6 million. These terrible figures are growing by the hour. The Israeli authorities call their actions differently – expanding operations or preparing a bridgehead, but that is not the point. The point is that, despite the unambiguous reaction in the world, West Jerusalem has begun the practical realization of its plans to “clean up” the enclave.

This unsightly situation was also caused by the fact that, due to the position of the United States, the Security Council was paralyzed and has not yet been able to adopt a resolution urgently demanding a ceasefire. We have twice come out with similar initiatives, but Washington and West Jerusalem have completely different plans: to exterminate the population of Gaza or “push” it out of the Strip, and assimilate the rest of the Palestinian population into Israel to solve the Palestinian problem in this way.