UNITED NATIONS (Dispatches) — The United States on Wednesday vetoed a UN resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the war in Gaza, allowing Israel to press ahead with its relentless genocide of the Palestinians.  
The UN Security Council voted 14-1 in favor of the resolution sponsored by the 10 elected members on the 15-member council, but it was not adopted because of the U.S. veto.
The resolution that was put to a vote demanded “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire to be respected by all parties, and further reiterates its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of all” capitives. 
With more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza martyred, according to its health authority, the threat of famine, especially in the north, and no sign of an end to the war, the council’s 10 elected members decided to focus first on a cease-fire.
Guyana’s UN Ambassador Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett introduced the resolution on behalf of the elected members, saying “It was prompted by the council’s deep concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, including what was unfolding in North Gaza, and the need for an urgent response to that situation.”
She stressed the resolution’s demand for immediate access for humanitarian aid deliveries throughout Gaza, and the Security Council’s primary responsibility to uphold international peace and security and its demands for an immediate cease-fire, and for the release of hostages.
U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood said, “We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional ceasefire that failed to release” the Israeli captives.
Algeria’s UN Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab representative and an elected member of the council, was sharply critical of the U.S. vote and the council’s failure to take action.
“Today’s message is clear to the Israeli occupying power: First you may continue your genocide. You may continue your collective punishment of the Palestinian people with complete impunity. In this chamber, you enjoy immunity,” he said.
Bendjama called the resolution’s defeat a missed opportunity that will have “devastating consequences for the international order.” But he vowed that the elected members will return soon with an even stronger resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which is militarily enforceable – and they will not stop until the council takes action. 
China’s UN Ambassador Fu Cong said each time the United States had exercised its veto to protect Israel, the number of people killed in Gaza had steadily risen.
“How many more people have to die before they wake up from their pretend slumber?”
“Insistence on setting a precondition for ceasefire is tantamount to giving the green light to continue the war and condoning the continued killing.”
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said, “It is shocking that the U.S. has vetoed an effort to save the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.”
“Though perhaps we should not be surprised about it.”
On Wednesday, Zionist forces martyredat least 33 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, including a rescue worker, health officials said, as troops deepened an incursion along the territory’s northern edge, bombarding a hospital and blowing up homes.
Medics said at least 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the area of Jabalia in northern Gaza earlier on Wednesday, and at least 10 people remained missing as rescue operations continued. Another man was killed in tank shelling nearby, they said.
Later on Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike killed seven Palestinians, including a girl, in Al-Mawasi, a humanitarian-designated area in western Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Gaza medics said. Palestinian and UN officials say no place in the enclave is safe.
Another airstrike on a house in Remal neighbourhood in Gaza City killed four people, while a strike killed three Palestinians and wounded at least 20 others at a school sheltering displaced families in central Gaza Strip, medics said
Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, one of three medical facilities barely operational in the besieged northern area, said the hospital “was bombed across all its departments without warning, as we were trying to save an injured person in the intensive care unit” on Tuesday.
“Following the arrest of 45 members of the medical and surgical staff and the denial of entry to a replacement team, we are now losing wounded
 patients daily who could have survived if resources were available,” he told Reuters in a text message.
“Unfortunately, food and water are not allowed to enter, and not even a single ambulance is permitted access to the north.”
There were 85 injured people, including children and women, at the hospital, six in the ICU. Seventeen children had arrived with signs of malnutrition as a result of food shortages. One man died of dehydration a day ago, Abu Safiya added.
Israeli atrocities in Gaza have focused for weeks on the northern edge of the territory, where the military has laid siege to three major towns and ordered residents to flee.
Residents in the three towns - Jabalia, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun - said forces had blown up dozens of houses. Palestinians say the occupying regime appears determined to permanently depopulate the area to create a buffer zone along the northern edge of Gaza.
Israel’s 13-month genocide in Gaza has martyred nearly 44,000 people and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population at least once.  
Months of attempts to negotiate a ceasefire have yielded scant progress and negotiations are now on ice, with mediator Qatar having suspended its efforts until the sides are prepared to make concessions.
Although Israel’s assaults have been focused on the towns on the northern edge since last month, its strikes have continued across the territory.
In the Sabra suburb of Gaza City, the Palestinian civil emergency service said an Israeli airstrike targeted one of its teams during a rescue operation, killing one staff member and wounding three others. In the nearby Zeitoun neighbourhood an Israeli strike on a house killed two people, medics said.
The death in Sabra raised the number of civil emergency service members killed since. Oct 7, 2023 to 87, the service said.
In Rafah, in the south, medics said three men were killed and others wounded in two separate Israeli airstrikes.