A U.N. resolution condemning Israel for excessive force in confronting riots and terrorist activity on the Gaza border for the past several weeks is "totally one-sided" and "does nothing to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley lamented before the General Assembly on Wednesday, ahead of the vote.
The resolution ultimately passed, condemning Israel's "excessive" violence against Gazans in weekly riots at the border between Israel and Gaza, but neglecting to mention Hamas' role.
Haley said that while the humanitarian situation in Gaza was an "important international matter," it was no more urgent than conflicts in "other desperate places."
But rather than talking about the starving population of Yemen or ethnic cleansing in Burma, Haley said, what makes Gaza different is that "for some, attacking Israel is their favorite political sport."
The U.S. envoy condemned the resolution as making peace "less possible" and "stoking hatred."
"It feeds a narrative to the desperate people of Gaza that their leaders are not responsible for their predicament. It stokes hatred. It sacrifices honesty, accuracy, compromise, and reconciliation in favor of the advancement of a narrow political agenda," she said.
Haley said that while there were "no perfect actors" on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is unhelpful to pretend that all the blame lies on one side.
Haley told the General Assembly that she wished all the nations supporting the resolution would put as much effort into encouraging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come to the negotiating table as they did trying to show the people "back home" that they were taking action on Gaza.
"Israel withdrew completely from Gaza in 2005," Haley said. "Hamas has been the de facto government in Gaza since 2007. The land … has enormous potential, yet after 11 years of Hamas rule, Gaza … has enormous unemployment and poverty. It is a haven for terrorist activity. At what point will the U.N. hold accountable those who are in charge of Gaza and running it into the ground?"
Haley said that Hamas and its affiliates have fired over 100 rockets into Israel this past month, "hoping to cause death to as many civilians and as much destruction as possible"; used Palestinian civilians as human shields; refused to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority to unite in the pursuit of peace; and called for the destruction of the State of Israel "within any borders."
"Yet the resolution not only fails to blame Hamas for these actions, it fails to even mention Hamas," she said.
Haley said that an amendment to the resolution, proposed by the U.S., offered an "opportunity to salvage something honest from this discussion."
"Our amendment rightly condemns Hamas' indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israeli civilian communities," she explained. "It accurately condemns the diversion of aid and resources from civilian needs into military infrastructure, including terror tunnels used to attack Israeli citizens," and "expresses our grave concerns about damage done to border crossings that [is] hindering the delivery of food and fuel to the people of Gaza."
Urging U.N. members to support the proposed amendment, Haley said it reflected the "minimum truth about what it going on in Gaza" and called it "the least that any self-respecting international organization or nation can do for the cause of peace."
