US Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Wednesday submitted a draft resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip to the UN Security Council, Axios reports.
Blinken told a Saudi Arabian journalist in an interview that the draft calls “for an immediate ceasefire tied to the release of hostages, and we hope very much that countries will support that. I think that would send a strong message, a strong signal. But, of course, we stand with Israel and its right to defend itself, to make sure that October 7th never happens again, but at the same time, it’s imperative that the civilians who are in harm’s way and who are suffering so terribly – that we focus on them, that we make them a priority, protecting the civilians, getting them humanitarian assistance. And we’ve been leading the effort to do that, to get more in, to get more to the people who need it. We are pressing on that as hard as we can.”