Palestinians Outcry US Beit Hanun Veto

Hamad said the veto is "a signal that the US had given legitimacy to the massacres."

The US veto is "a signal that the US had given legitimacy to the massacres and a green light to (Israel) to ... carry out more massacres," Palestinian government's spokesman Ghazi Hamad told Reuters.

Twenty Palestinian civilians, including eight children and four women, were killed Wednesday, November 8, and up to 50 others were wounded when Israel shelled their homes in the already battered town of Beit Hanun.

"The US position is not surprising. The Bush administration has always given green lights to Israel to pursue its occupation and settlement activity and has always legitimized massacres committed in Palestine and in Iraq," said Hamad.

In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Nabil Abu Rdaineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, voiced the same frustration.

"The US veto encourages Israel to continue with its aggression against the Palestinian people," he said in a statement.

Ten of the UN Security Council's 15 members voted in favor of the amended text, introduced by Qatar on behalf of Arab member states, and four -- Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia -- abstained.

The text would have condemned Israel's military operations in Gaza, particularly the Beit Hanun incident, along with the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.

It would have also called on Israel "to immediately cease its military operations that endanger the Palestinian civilian population in the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and to immediately withdraw its forces from within the Gaza Strip to positions prior to June 28, 2006."

The Qatari draft would have directed the UN secretary general to set up a fact-finding mission on the Beit Hanun attack within 30 days.

But the "no" vote cast by US Ambassador John Bolton was enough to kill the resolution to the immediate satisfaction of Israel.

"The American veto is very satisfactory. The draft resolution did not stipulate that what happened at Beit Hanun was a tragic error," said Israeli government spokesman Avi Pazner.

The council vote had been delayed by 24 hours as the sponsors continued efforts to try to make the text more palatable to Western countries.

The Beit Hanun carnage drew worldwide condemnation and led to calls for an immediate halt to a long-running Israel onslaught in Gaza Strip, that has left more than 300 Palestinians dead since it was unleashed in June.

"Biased"

Rice said Washington was "compelled to vote against" the draft. (Reuters)

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice they were "compelled to vote against" the draft, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The resolution would have used the tragic incident in Beit Hanun to advance a one-sided political agenda," she said.

"The resolution included inflammatory and unnecessary language that would aggravate the situation in Gaza ... (and) failed to include any reference to terrorism or to condemn Hamas for its threats to broaden the attacks against Israel and the United States," Rice added.

But France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere disagreed.

"I think the text was a balanced one and (its) adoption would have sent the right signal to both parties that the Security Council is really concerned about what is happening in Gaza, really concerned about the deaths of civilians and the protection of civilians."

As one of the council's five permanent members along with Britain, China, France and Russia, the US has veto power which it has now used 82 times, including 41 times to shield Israel from censure.

Its previous use of the veto was in July to block a draft resolution that would have condemned Israel's military onslaught in Gaza as "disproportionate force" and would have demanded a halt to Israeli operations in the impoverished territory.

Palestinian UN observer Ryad Mansour accused the UN council of "shirking its responsibility".

"Palestine is disappointed again," he said and warned that the US veto would push extremists on both sides "to take matters into their own hands".

The Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), a Palestinian resistance faction, threatened to target American interests because of the veto.

"America has colluded with the enemy (Israel) in their aggression against our people and therefore we will treat them in the same way as we treat the occupiers against our land."

Arab countries would now most likely take their case to the 192-member General Assembly, where their draft would get a more sympathetic hearing.

Mansour said Arab foreign ministers, due to hold a special meeting in Cairo Sunday, would decide whether to turn to the General Assembly for support.

The Israeli killing machine claimed more Palestinian lives Sunday, November 12, as a Palestinian teenager was killed and three other people were wounded near the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya.

The deaths bring to 5,560 the number of people killed since the start of the second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000, the vast majority of them Palestinians, according to an AFP count.