(HorizonPost.com) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced that he would not be sending an Israeli delegation to Washington now that the United States refused to veto the UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza during Ramadan, CBS News reported.
The United States abstained from Monday’s vote on the resolution which also demanded the release of the remaining hostages abducted during the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.
Netanyahu’s office blasted the Biden administration for abstaining, calling it a “clear retreat” from the United States’s “consistent position” since the war began in October.
The prime minister’s office asserted that such a ceasefire would hurt Israel’s war effort and its efforts to release the hostages by giving Hamas hope that pressure from the UN would allow the terrorists to accept a ceasefire without the release of the hostages.
Netanyahu told the Biden administration on Sunday that he would not send a delegation from the War Cabinet to Washington to discuss the military plans for the Rafah operation if the United States did not veto the Security Council resolution.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller described Netanyahu’s statement as “surprising and unfortunate.” Miller said while the US had concerns over the resolution’s failure to condemn the October 7 attack, the administration chose not to veto it since the call for a ceasefire and release of the remaining hostages was consistent with US policy.
Miller noted that the resolution was “non-binding.”
During Monday’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby expressed disappointment that Netanyahu was canceling the delegation, telling reporters that the administration was “perplexed” by Israel’s response since the abstention was not a “shift in our policy.”
Kirby suggested that Prime Minister Netanyahu was attempting to “create a perception” that the administration’s position on the war in Gaza had changed and insisted that the policy remains the same.
Kirby conceded that the administration opposed Israel’s planned operation in Rafah, telling reporters that the White House did not believe that a ground operation was “the right course of action.”
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