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STORY: UN / GENERAL ASSEMBLY GAZA VETO
TRT: 05:00
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 09 JANUARY 2024, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters
09 JANUARY 2024, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, General Assembly
3. Wide shot, US Ambassador Robert A. Wood walks up to General Assembly rostrum
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Robert A. Wood, Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs, United States:
“We worked closely with the UAE, members of the Arab group, and many other Council members, engaging in good faith to craft a strong, humanitarian focussed resolution. This work supports the direct diplomacy the United States is engaged in to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza and to help get hostages out of Gaza. And it is unfortunate that rather than contributing to the hard work of diplomacy, one permanent member of the Security Council continues to put forward amendments and ideas that are disconnected from the situation on the ground.”
4. Wide shot, Wood at the rostrum
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Robert A. Wood, Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs, United States:
“As Israel moves to a lower intensity phase of its military operation in the North, we believe the United Nations has a crucial role to play in evaluating what needs to be done to allow displaced Palestinians to return home. On humanitarian aid, we've made progress in increasing the assistance into Gaza, but we know that it is still insufficient to meet the massive need. Too many Palestinian civilians are suffering from insufficient access to food, water, medicine and other essential supplies.”
6. Wide shot, Palestine Ambassador Riyad Mansour at the rostrum
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Palestine:
“No one can understand that the Council is calling for protection of civilians, is deploring attacks against them, is calling for immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access, for humanitarian assistance at scale, is rejecting forced displacement and concerned about regional spill-over, while at the same time being prevented from calling for an immediate humanitarian cease fire, indispensable to achieve all these aims. This schizophrenia needs to end.”
8. Med shot, Israel delegation
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Palestine:
“This is a war of atrocities. How can you reconcile opposing these atrocities and vetoing a call to end the war that is leading to their commission.”
10. Med shot, US delegation
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer to the United Nations, Palestine:
“How can anyone support a war with such criminal means deployed to achieve such criminal objectives? And how can anyone oppose its criminal objectives and give Israel the means to pursue them? Don't call for peace and spread fire.”
12. Pan left, GA
13. Wide shot, Israel Ambassador Gilad Erdan walks up to rostrum
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Gilad Erdan, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Israel:
“How can a baby be a target or deliberate a target? What kind of monsters intentionally take a baby hostage and treat him like an enemy? It is so painful that a baby is being held hostage by terrorists that instead of love, fear is surrounded by sheer evil. But above all, it is utterly heart wrenching that to the UN, the pain of an innocent baby has been all but forgotten. For heaven's sake. A baby is about to spend his first birthday as a hostage. A hostage in the hands of the rapist murderers of Hamas. A sweet baby is being held hostage, and you prefer to discuss a ceasefire that will keep the Hamas Nazis that abducted him in power. Kfir is in the hands of Hamas, and you are focussed on supplying aid to those that took him?”
15. Wide shot, Erdan displaying birthday cake prop
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Gilad Erdan, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Israel:
“The UN, an organisation that remains silent when babies are taken hostage and women are viciously raped, has become an accomplice of terrorists. And if the UN is the accomplice to terrorists, it has no justification, justification to exist. Look at Kfir. Imagine this was your child.”
17. Wide shot, General Assembly
The General Assembly today (9 Jan) held a plenary meeting to debate the use of a veto cast by the United States on a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on 22 December 2023.
Opening the debate, US Ambassador Robert Wood said, “we worked closely with the UAE, members of the Arab group, and many other Council members, engaging in good faith to craft a strong, humanitarian focussed resolution.”
Explaining the use of the veto, he said it was “unfortunate that rather than contributing to the hard work of diplomacy,” the Russian Federation “continues to put forward amendments and ideas that are disconnected from the situation on the ground.”
Wood said, “as Israel moves to a lower intensity phase of its military operation in the North, we believe the United Nations has a crucial role to play in evaluating what needs to be done to allow displaced Palestinians to return home.”
On humanitarian aid, he continued, “we've made progress in increasing the assistance into Gaza, but we know that it is still insufficient to meet the massive need.”
Wood said, “too many Palestinian civilians are suffering from insufficient access to food, water, medicine and other essential supplies.”
Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly that “no one can understand that the Council is calling for protection of civilians, is deploring attacks against them, is calling for immediate, safe and unhindered humanitarian access, for humanitarian assistance at scale, is rejecting forced displacement and concerned about regional spill-over, while at the same time being prevented from calling for an immediate humanitarian cease fire, indispensable to achieve all these aims.”
This “schizophrenia,” he said, “needs to end.”
Mansour said, “this is a war of atrocities. How can you reconcile opposing these atrocities and vetoing a call to end the war that is leading to their commission.”
He said, “how can anyone support a war with such criminal means deployed to achieve such criminal objectives? And how can anyone oppose its criminal objectives and give Israel the means to pursue them? Don't call for peace and spread fire.”
For his part, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan recalled that one of the hostages taken by Hamas on 7 October, named Kfir, has just turned one year old while in captivity.
Erdan said, “how can a baby be a target or deliberate a target? What kind of monsters intentionally take a baby hostage and treat him like an enemy? It is so painful that a baby is being held hostage by terrorists that instead of love, fear is surrounded by sheer evil. But above all, it is utterly heart wrenching that to the UN, the pain of an innocent baby has been all but forgotten.”
He continued, “a baby is about to spend his first birthday as a hostage. A hostage in the hands of the rapist murderers of Hamas. A sweet baby is being held hostage, and you prefer to discuss a ceasefire that will keep the Hamas Nazis that abducted him in power. Kfir is in the hands of Hamas, and you are focussed on supplying aid to those that took him?”
Erdan said, “the UN, an organisation that remains silent when babies are taken hostage and women are viciously raped, has become an accomplice of terrorists. And if the UN is the accomplice to terrorists, it has no justification, justification to exist. Look at Kfir. Imagine this was your child.”
The plenary meeting debated the situation as to which the veto was cast during the Security Council’s 9520th meeting under the agenda item entitled: “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.”
General Assembly resolution A/RES/76/262 stipulates that the President of the General Assembly shall convene a formal meeting of the General Assembly within ten working days of a veto being cast by a permanent member of the Security Council.
