Israel-Hamas war updates: US vetoes UN resolution urging Gaza ceasefire

This live page is now closed. Follow along with our coverage of the Israel-Gaza war at our new page, here.

For more context on conflict, read about the US veto of the latest draft ceasefire resolution at the UN Security Council, here.

Or watch our interview with a former Israeli military general on the high civilian toll of operations, here.

We will soon be closing this live page. Here’s a recap of the day’s developments:

• The US vetoes a UN Security Council draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
• UN agency for Palestinian refugees says it is barely operating in Gaza as Israel intensifies fighting in both the north and the south.
• A top Israeli official says continued military operations in Khan Younis are expected to last up to four weeks, according to a report in Axios.
• Widespread damage to the medieval Omari Mosque – the largest in Gaza City, long considered a symbol of the enclave – in an Israeli attack stokes further outrage.
• Hamas says several captives were “killed and injured” in Israeli strikes in recent days.

Protesters took to the streets on Friday in several Arab countries in a show of support for the Palestinians against a continuing Israeli military campaign in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

In Jordan, a huge march was staged in the centre of the capital Amman following Friday prayers.

Some protesters chanted: “People want the liberation of Palestine”, “We die and Palestine lives”, Jordanian newspaper al-Ghad reported online.

See the full photo gallery here.

Pro-Palestinian members of the Jewish community in the US are protesting in the Philadelphia offices of Democratic Party Congressman Dwight Evans to demand he support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

“We’ve been making calls and visiting his office for two months. He still hasn’t taken action. We’re not leaving until he does,” the advocacy group IfNotNow said on social media.

The IfNotNow movement is made up of American Jews who are pressing for the US to end its support for “Israel’s apartheid system” towards Palestinians.

RIGHT NOW: #JewsForCeasefire are sitting in at @RepDwightEvans' office in Philadelphia and demanding he support an immediate, lasting ceasefire.

We've been making calls and visiting his office for two months. He still hasn't taken action.

We're not leaving until he does. pic.twitter.com/aalz8YBQlp

— IfNotNow🔥🕎 (@IfNotNowOrg) December 8, 2023

“The US obstruction of the issuance of a ceasefire resolution is a direct participation with the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing,” said Izzat al-Risheq, a member of the group’s political bureau.

The Jordanian foreign minister [Ayman Safadi] spoke to journalists earlier today at a think tank, and he said that what is happening now has basically erased the last 30 years of work.

He said people in his region are getting angrier by the day, and what this has done is made it so that an entire generation of people cannot even imagine a peace process, let alone peace.

The images, he said, that the world is seeing, specifically of those [Palestinian] men stripped down to their underwear and in many cases blindfolded and kneeling on the ground. He said that has already dealt a strategic blow to Israel [by] bringing attention to the world of the way Palestinians have been living under [Israel’s] illegal occupation and siege.

The US has displayed a “callous disregard for civilian suffering”, Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, said.

“The US has brazenly wielded and weaponised its veto … further undermining its credibility and ability to live up to its mandate to maintain international peace and security,” Callamard said.

The use of the veto, she added, is “morally indefensible”.

Earlier this week, a report by the UK-based rights group said US-made munitions that were used by the Israeli army killed 43 civilians in two air strikes in Gaza. Among them were 19 children, 14 women and 10 men, it said.

Israel’s military says the grainy clip shows a strike on a manned Hezbollah observation post in southern Lebanon.

Cross-border fighting between Lebanese group Hezbollah and Israel has remained constant since October 8.

Hezbollah said four of its fighters were killed in Israeli army strikes today.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh describes the inability of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution and implement a ceasefire in Gaza as “a disgrace”.

The US’s veto empowers Israel to continue “killing, destroying and displacing” Palestinians, he said.

He further described it as a violation of “truth, justice, freedom and human rights”.

Noura Erakat says that today’s US veto of a draft resolution that would have called for a ceasefire in Gaza “represents its 45th veto issued in the Security Council in order to protect Israel from any accountability”.

“The US is obviously a part of the problem and also needs to be met with the harshest measures by the international community in order to stop it from continuing to produce this harm,” the Rutgers University professor told Al Jazeera.

She decried the “failure” of all international legal mechanisms that are meant to overcome intransigence in the Security Council, such as Article 99 of the UN charter and the International Criminal Court.

“At this point, we need more people to resign. We need more people to demonstrate the failure of these international institutions and refuse to participate,” she said.

The Israeli defence minister has thanked the US for its “bold leadership” after it used its veto power on a draft resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“A ceasefire is handing a prize to Hamas, dismissing the hostages held in Gaza, and signalling terror groups everywhere,” Gallant wrote on X.

The US was the only member of the UN Security Council to vote against the resolution.

“The many Iran-aligned militias that operate freely in Iraq threaten the security and stability of Iraq, our personnel and our partners in the region,” says Matthew Miller.

In a statement, he urged Iraqi security forces to “immediately investigate and arrest” the perpetrators of these attacks, reminding the Iraqi government that it has “repeatedly” committed to protect US military personnel.

Approximately seven mortar rounds landed in the US embassy compound in Baghdad during an attack earlier today in what appears to be the largest attack of its kind in recent memory.

Louis Charbonneau, UN director at Human Rights Watch, says that by using its veto, the US has prevented the UN Security Council from making decisions that “the US itself has been demanding”.

That includes calling for all parties to the conflict to comply with international humanitarian law, protect civilians, and release “civilians held hostage”, Charbonneau said in a post on X.

“By continuing to provide Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover as it commits atrocities … the US risks complicity in war crimes,” he said.

.@hrw: The US used its veto again to prevent the Security Council from making some of the calls the US itself has been demanding of #Israel & Palestinian armed groups, including compliance w/ int’l humanitarian law, protection of civilians & releasing all civilians held hostage. pic.twitter.com/VGnWBEkxwL

— louis charbonneau (@loucharbon) December 8, 2023

Speaking after the US vetoed the resolution, Riyad Mansour called the move “beyond regrettable”.

“It is disastrous,” he said. “The Security Council was again prevented from rising to this moment to uphold its clear responsibilities in the face of this grave crisis threatening human lives and threatening regional and international peace and security.

“Instead of allowing this council to uphold its mandate by finally making a clear call after two months of massacres that the atrocities must end, the war criminals are given more time to perpetuate them,” Mansour said.

“How can this be justified?”

Gilad Erdan slammed the UN Security Council resolution that the US vetoed as “distorted”.

The Israeli ambassador to the UN added that a ceasefire would only be possible when all of the captives held in Gaza are released and when Hamas is destroyed.

I thank the United States and President Biden for standing firmly by our side, today and showing their leadership and values. On this Hanukkah holiday, a little of the light dispelled a lot of the darkness.

It is shocking that while Hamas is firing rockets at Israel from…

— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) December 8, 2023

After a visit to the besieged Gaza Strip, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) deputy executive director said he encountered “fear” and “chaos”.

“Confusion at warehouses, distribution points with thousands of desperate hungry people, supermarkets with bare shelves, and overcrowded shelters with bursting bathrooms. The dull thud of bombs was the soundtrack for our day,” Carl Skau said in a statement.

He described not being able to answer families he met with when they asked if help would be coming soon, and cited a WFP survey conducted during the truce that found nine out of 10 families in some areas of Gaza spent a full day and night without any food at all.

The organisation’s work in Gaza is “simply untenable” under current circumstances, he said.

“We need an end to this conflict.”

Daunting visit to #Gaza today. Chaos, desperation, families living on the streets as storms close in.

There's not enough food. People are starving.

WFP has reached over 1 million people, but the situation is untenable. We need to get our supplies in & a humanitarian ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/3izXWjEfey

— Carl Skau (@CarlSkau) December 8, 2023