China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi

China’s foreign minister blasts the United States for choking any criticism of the Israeli regime’s barbarity against the Palestinians at the United Nations Security Council.

Regrettably, simply because of the obstruction of one country, the Security Council hasn’t been able to speak with one voice, Wang Yi told an emergency meeting of the Council on Sunday.

Since Monday, as many as 192 Palestinians, including 58 children and 34 women, have died during a significant escalation in the Israeli military’s attacks against Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

One strike recently slew a 10-member family, including eight children.

More than 1,200 others have also been injured so far.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has, however, said the regime’s strikes against Gaza were to continue with full force.

We are acting now, for as long as necessary, he said, claiming that the aggression was necessary to restore calm and will take time to cease.

Scores of others have died in the nearby Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, including the holy city of al-Quds, during the regime’s attacks on Palestinian worshippers and protesters.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Club, an NGO, Israel has arrested 1,500 Palestinians in the West Bank since early April.

The US that has, throughout the Security Council’s history, been protecting the regime against any accountability on the international stage, has so far prevented the Council from releasing even a simple press statement asking Tel Aviv to stop its aggression.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin addressed the same meeting, strongly condemning the use of violence against civilians and criticizing Israel’s efforts to manipulate the status quo at the al-Aqsa Mosque’s compound in al-Quds’ Old City.

He repeated Moscow’s call for an urgent meeting of the so-called Middle East Quartet that gathers his country, the US, the UN, and the European Union, to address the escalation.

Opening the Sunday meeting, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the violence as utterly appalling.

The Palestinian movement of Hamas that is headquartered in Gaza and its fellow Islamic Jihad resistance group have fired thousands of missiles towards the occupied territories in retaliation.

Also on Sunday, Gaza’s fighters issued a new rocket barrage against the central and southern parts of the occupied territories.

According to the Israeli military, this is the first time the occupied territories are targeted with so many projectiles in a relatively short time space.

US Senator Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, laid into Washington for lavishing billions in military aid on the Israeli regime that, in turn, uses the money towards human rights violations.

The devastation in Gaza is unconscionable. We must urge an immediate ceasefire, he tweeted.

We must also take a hard look at nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. It is illegal for US aid to support human rights violations, Sanders added.

Elsewhere across the world, the issue of Palestine has been serving as a rallying point even among potentially diverging factions and states.

In Iraq, sundry political, cultural, and social factions have been singing a chorus of protest against the Israeli atrocities.

These have included Chair of the al-Azm Coalition, Khamis al-Khanjar, who enjoys considerable connection among the Iraqi Sunnis and tribes. Khanjar called Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, expressing Iraq’s solidarity with Palestinians.

Iyad Allawi, a former prime minister and head of the al-Wataniya Coalition, and Osama Nujaifi, head of the Salvation and Development Front, also issued separate statements, blasting Tel Aviv’s aggression and sympathizing with the Palestinian nation.

Nouri al-Maliki, another former premier and secretary-general of the Islamic Dawa Party, expressed support for the Palestinian people during a televised program and said Baghdad would never normalize its relations with the Israeli regime.

Influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr addressed the regional Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, who last year normalized their ties with Tel Aviv in a tweet. He called on those states to either roll back or downgrade the détente and adopt pro-Palestinian stances amid the dire situation.

Several Iraqi resistance groups have, meanwhile, announced their readiness to join in security and military cooperation with Gaza’s movements in the face of the Israeli assaults.

The issue of the Israeli barbarity also came up in a telephone conversation between Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who both condemned the Israeli violence and called for international action against the regime’s atrocities.