News - Middle East: The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for a long-overdue end to the Israeli regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.

A total of 158 countries voted in favor of the resolution on Wednesday. Nine struck it down, including the regime and the United States, Tel Aviv’s biggest ally, while 13 countries abstained.

The resolution urges "an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire" in Gaza, where the war, launched following a retaliatory operation staged by the coastal sliver’s resistance groups, has so far claimed the lives of at least 44,805 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

Robert Wood, the US’s deputy UN envoy, however, said it would be "shameful and wrong" to adopt the text.

Washington, which has used its veto power on almost every occasion to prevent ratification of similar resolutions at the UN Security Council, has claimed that potential cessation of the war would rob Palestinian resistance movements of an incentive to release the captives that they seized during the retaliation.

The movements, however, responded positively to a temporary ceasefire last year, releasing as many as 105 captives in line with their promise to do so. They have vowed to release more on the occasion the regime ceased the aggression again, and free all of them in case of a complete end to the war.

Dozens of representatives of UN member states addressed the assembly before the vote to offer their support to Palestinians.

"Gaza doesn't exist anymore. It is destroyed," said Slovenia's Samuel Zbogar, adding, "History is the harshest critic of inaction."

Algeria's deputy UN ambassador Nacim Gaouaoui, also said, "The price of silence and failure in the face of the Palestinian tragedy is a very heavy price, and it will be heavier tomorrow."

The Israeli regime’s representative Danny Danon, however, alleged that "the resolutions before the assembly today are beyond logic…The vote today is not a vote for compassion. It is a vote for complicity."

A second resolution calling on the regime to respect the mandate of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, and allow it to continue its operations across the Palestinian territories was also passed by a vote of 159-9 with 11 abstentions.

It demanded that the regime "enable its (the agency’s) operations to proceed without impediment or restriction."

In early November, the regime banned UNRWA’s operations across the Palestinian territories, terminating the body’s decades-long crucial relief practices and, therefore, putting millions of lives at risk.

It has alleged that UNRWA’s staff “participated” in the resistance operation that was followed by the Israeli war.

The Israeli military’s attacks against Gaza during the war have also killed at least 333 aid workers, 243 of whom used to serve the agency.
 Source: Press TV