• Algeria has requested a UN Security Council vote on Tuesday, but Washington signalled it is likely to veto the measure.

RAFAH, Gaza Strip: Israeli strikes across Gaza killed at least 18 people overnight and into Sunday, according to medics and witnesses, as the United States said it would veto another draft UN ceasefire resolution.

The US, Israel’s top ally, instead hopes to broker a ceasefire agreement and hostage release between Israel and Hamas, and envisions a wider resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back, calling Hamas’ demands “delusional” and rejecting US and international calls for a pathway to Palestinian statehood.

His Cabinet adopted a declaration Sunday saying Israel “categorically rejects international edicts on a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians” and opposes any unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, which it said would “grant a major prize to terror” after the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.

Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until “total victory” over Hamas and to expand it to Gaza’s southernmost town of Rafah, where more than half the enclave’s population of 2.3 million Palestinians has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

The head of the World Health Organization, meanwhile, said Nasser Hospital, the main medical center serving southern Gaza, “is not functional anymore” after Israeli forces raided the facility in the southern city of Khan Younis last week.

An airstrike in Rafah overnight killed six people, including a woman and three children, and another strike killed five men in Khan Younis, the main target of the offensive over the past two months. Associated Press journalists saw the bodies arrive at a hospital in Rafah.

In Gaza City, which was isolated, largely evacuated and suffered widespread destruction in the initial weeks of the war, an airstrike flattened a family home, killing seven people, including three women, according to Sayed Al-Afifi, a relative of the deceased.

The Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes and blames civilian casualties on Hamas because the militants operate in dense residential areas.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council could hold a vote next week, sought by Algeria, on a resolution seeking an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza, diplomatic sources told AFP Saturday, although Washington again appeared set to block it.

Algeria launched discussions on a new draft after the International Court of Justice ruled in late January that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocidal acts in its war in Gaza, which it says is targeting Hamas militants.

The latest version of the text, seen by AFP Saturday, “demands an immediate humanitarian ceasefire that must be respected by all parties.”

It also “rejects forced displacement of the Palestinian civilian population,” and it “demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel responded by launching a relentless assault on Gaza that has killed at least 28,858 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Algeria has requested a UN Security Council vote on Tuesday, but Washington signalled it is likely to veto the measure.

US President Joe Biden is working with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar on a hostage deal that would bring about six weeks of a “prolonged pause in fighting,” US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement on Algeria’s proposed draft.

“The resolution put forward in the Security Council, in contrast, would not achieve these outcomes, and indeed, may run counter to them,” Thomas-Greenfield said.

“The United States does not support action on this draft resolution,” she added. “Should it come up for a vote as drafted, it will not be adopted.”

Like previous texts opposed by Israel and the United States, the new text does not condemn the unprecedented attack by Hamas.

Earlier this month, Thomas-Greenfield said that Algeria’s latest initiative risked derailing the negotiations.

“We believe that it is high time now for the Security Council to decide on a humanitarian ceasefire resolution,” Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said recently, adding there is “massive support” for the text’s elements among council members.

In October and December, despite international pressure over Gaza’s growing humanitarian crisis, Washington vetoed texts calling for a ceasefire.

The Security Council has adopted just two resolutions on Gaza since October 7, including one calling for large-scale delivery of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory.

AFP