Gaza war persists due to US and Israeli ‘stubbornness’ – Moscow

The two nations are preventing the UN Security Council from stopping “the vicious circle of violence,” a Russian envoy has said

The uncompromising stance of Israel and the US is making it impossible to end the conflict in Gaza, which has been raging for more than a year, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN has said.

Vassily Nebenzia spoke at a UN Security Council session dedicated to the crisis in the Middle East on Tuesday.

The attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on October 7 last year, in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage, was “a tragedy” that is now being used to justify “the merciless and inhumane mass collective punishment of the Palestinians,” the envoy said.

The people of Gaza “are facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe unseen since World War Two,” he stressed.

Nebenzia noted that due to Israel’s air and ground campaign, almost 42,000 people – mainly women and children – have been killed in Gaza in the past year, and the number of wounded and missing is approaching 100,000, while another 2 million Palestinians are internally displaced.

"This is the result of the stubbornness of the Israeli leadership and its patronage by the American allies... who do not allow the Security Council to stop this vicious circle of violence,” Nebenzia insisted.

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