Arab Nations Condemn U.S. for Vetoing Cease-Fire Resolution

The United States’ decision to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution that called for an immediate cease-fire in the war in Gaza has sparked frustration among Arab governments that are pushing to end the conflict, with one group of regional officials expressing “deep dissatisfaction” over the move.

Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority — which Washington and others have floated as a potential governing body for postwar Gaza — called the veto “a mark of shame that will follow the United States for many years” and said that American officials’ policy toward Israel had made their country “a partner in genocide.”

Israel says that it is trying to eradicate Hamas, which runs Gaza and launched the Oct. 7 attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

The Israeli government denies that it purposely targets civilians. Palestinians, Arab governments and international organizations, however, have raised significant concerns about the proportionality of its military response, which has killed more than 15,000 people in Gaza, according to health authorities there — a bombing campaign so intense that it has few precedents in this century.

A group of foreign ministers from Arab and Muslim-majority countries who had met with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken on Friday expressed “deep dissatisfaction with the inability of the Security Council to carry out its responsibilities,” the Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement. Those ministers also called for the United States “to play a broader role in pressuring the Israeli occupation,” according to Qatar’s foreign ministry.

The United States vetoed the resolution, put forward by the United Arab Emirates, on Friday as senior United Nations leaders warned that without a halt in the fighting it was nearly impossible to get sufficient aid to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza.