The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Monday calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza for the remainder of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, after the United States abstained from the vote, declining to veto it.

The resolution, which was backed by 14 nations except the United States, also calls for the release of all captives held in Gaza and “the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale.”

National Security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters shortly after the vote that the abstention did “not represent a shift in our policy.”

“We wanted to get to a place where we could support that resolution,” he said, adding that it lacked language the White House wanted, including a condemnation of Hamas.

Russia and China had vetoed a US proposal last week calling for a ceasefire tied to the release of Israeli hostages. The measure that passed on Monday still demands the hostages’ release, but does not directly link it to a ceasefire.

Washington’s decision to abstain marks weeks of back-and-forth criticism between Israel and the Biden administration.

Since December, US President Joe Biden and senior US officials have been challenging Israel over its conduct in the war, but Monday’s vote marks the US’s most formal criticism.

Before the vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reportedly threatened to cancel a delegation visit to Washington if the US did not use its veto and did not make the ceasefire conditional on the release of hostages.

Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant, is set to arrive in Washington on Monday for several meetings with senior US officials, including White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Separately, Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a key Netanyahu confidant, were scheduled to arrive in Washington early this week to hear American counter-proposals for a full-scale ground offensive on Rafah, the southern Gaza border city where about 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering.

The Hanegbi and Dermer delegation was scheduled after a call between Biden and Netanyahu, where Biden told his Israeli counterpart that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah would be a “mistake”.

Since 7 October, the US has shielded its ally from censure at the UN as international opinion turns against Israel.

The US has cast three vetos against calls for a ceasefire. Separately, Washington also blocked an amendment calling for a ceasefire that Russia had tried including on a Security Council resolution in December.

Last week, the US signalled it was ready to temper its support for Israel at the body, putting forward a resolution to recognise “the imperative” of an “immediate and sustained ceasefire”.

That text was nevertheless blocked by Russia and China, which along with Arab states criticised it for stopping short of explicitly demanding Israel halt its campaign in Gaza.

Resolution talks

The US has been floating a Gaza ceasefire resolution since February as a way to pressure Israel, with Washington increasingly frustrated by what Biden has labelled Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza and failure to craft a post-war plan for the besieged enclave which the UN has warned is on the brink of famine.

Frank Lowenstein, the former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration, previously told MEE that the US’s stepped-up criticism at the UN marked “a shot across Bibi’s [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] bow,” adding that “the Israelis are extremely sensitive about the UN. They view it as a hostile body and rely on the US to protect them there.”

The resolution has been the work of the council’s non-permanent members, who negotiated with the United States over the weekend to avoid another veto, according to diplomatic sources who expressed a certain optimism at its passage.

Unlike Friday’s text, the call for a ceasefire in the new resolution is not linked to ongoing talks, led by Qatar with support from the United States and Egypt, to halt fighting in return for Hamas releasing hostages.

The new text also deplores “all attacks against civilians and civilian objects, as well as all violence and hostilities against civilians, and all acts of terrorism”.

Israel has criticised the Security Council for previous resolutions that have not specifically condemned Hamas.

The Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel killed roughly 1,200 people and resulted in 250 hostages being taken back into Gaza.

In response, Israel launched a bloody offensive on the besieged enclave that has killed over 32,000 people, mostly women and children, and reduced the Mediterranean coastal strip to rubble.

A recent UN-backed report warned that famine was imminent in northern Gaza, a crisis many have accused Israel of causing by using starvation as a weapon of war.