UN General Assembly is due to vote later today (Tuesday) on a non-binding resolution demanding “an immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza.
The United States, one of only five permanent members of the Security Council, used its veto on Friday to halt a draft text calling for a ceasefire.
In a bid to build pressure, Arab countries called for the new special session of the General Assembly following a visit to the Rafah border by more than a dozen Security Council ambassadors this week, Times of Israel reports.
There are no vetoes in the General Assembly, but unlike the Security Council its resolutions are not legally binding.
The draft text, seen by AFP, largely reproduces the resolution blocked in the Council on Friday by the US.
Friday’s resolution demanded a ceasefire but failed to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacres in Israel — in which thousands of terrorists killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took about 240 hostages — or to acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself.
A temporary truce between Israel and Hamas ended on December 1.
