New York Times: Leaders of aid groups denounce the United States for vetoing a cease-fire resolution.

Leaders of several humanitarian organizations on Tuesday sharply denounced the United States for vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, criticizing the country for not doing more to use its international influence to prevent further death and destruction.

“Again, the U.S. has weaponized its veto power to obstruct, to undermine, the possibility of the U.N. Security Council taking action by calling for a cease-fire,” Amnesty’s director for global research and policy, Erika Guevara-Rosas, said at a media briefing held as the United States vetoed the resolution. Representatives from several international medical aid groups had convened to discuss the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.

The veto was expected; the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said on Sunday that the resolution, presented by Algeria, would jeopardize ongoing talks to free hostages in Gaza. The United States has vetoed resolutions calling for a cease-fire twice before, standing alone among the other Security Council members.

Avril Benoit, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders in the United States, called the repeated blocking of cease-fire resolutions by the United States “unconscionable,” denouncing the decision as “effectively sabotaging all efforts to bring assistance.”

The United States is negotiating an alternative resolution, which proposes a temporary cease-fire contingent on the return of all hostages and greater aid being allowed into Gaza, but some speakers on Tuesday’s panel dismissed it as too weak or impractical.

Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, said the calls by the United States for a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah were “a mirage,” arguing that the rest of Gaza was “almost entirely uninhabitable” and there was no safe way for them to leave.

“It worries me, actually, to be hearing this from the U.S. government, this idea of a safe evacuation, because it suggests that such a thing is possible,” he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has ordered the military to draw up plans to evacuate civilians in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza packed with about 1.4 million people, many of whom moved there months before seeking shelter. Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, also said that the government had no intention of evacuating Palestinian civilians into Egypt.

Tsafrir Cohen, the executive director of the aid group Medico International, called on Israel’s two closest allies — the United States and Germany — to stop giving the Israeli government “carte blanche” and to condition their military support on ending the fighting, preventing further displacement in Gaza or into Egypt, and increased humanitarian aid entering the enclave.