CNN
The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution Saturday that would have condemned Israel for its military operations in Gaza.
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said the resolution, which also called for Israel to cease military operations immediately in the Palestinian territory, was "biased against Israel and politically motivated."
Qatar proposed the motion, which focused on Wednesday's shelling in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun that killed 18 people, mostly women and children.
The blocked resolution also condemned Palestinians who fire missiles from Gaza into Israel.
Bolton said the resolution's text was "unbalanced."
"We are disturbed at the language of the resolution that is in many places biased against Israel and politically motivated," Bolton said. "Such language does not further the cause of peace and its unacceptability to the United States in previous resolutions is well known."
Bolton said the text was wrong in equating what he called Israel's legal defense operations in Gaza with Palestinian acts of terrorism against civilians in Israel.
"We are disturbed that there is not a single reference to terrorism in the proposed resolution, nor any condemnation of the Hamas leadership's statement that Palestinians should resume terror attacks on a broad scale, or calls by the military wing of Hamas to Muslims worldwide to strike American targets and interests," he said.
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