Kuwait’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Mansour al-Otaibi told Asharq Al-Awsat that his country would ask for a vote in the Security Council on Thursday on a revised draft resolution calling for international protection for the Palestinian people living under Israeli occupation or under its siege. In parallel, Otaibi’s US counterpart Nikki Haley hinted that she would veto this effort hours after Kuwait hampered a US-drafted statement that condemned “in the strongest possible terms” Hamas and Islamic Jihad, ignoring dozens of Palestinian civilians, who were killed by Israeli fire on the Gaza Strip borders and thousands of wounded. The United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations distributed the draft statement, hoping to receive an approval before the emergency meeting it had requested. However, Kuwait disrupted the US project, which needed the approval of all 15 members of the council. Diplomatic sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Kuwait “broke the silence procedure” to disrupt the issuance of the US statement because the members of the Security Council “are studying a Kuwaiti draft resolution dealing with the issue of protecting civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gaza Strip in its entirety.” The US representative said that her country rejected the “destructive” and “terrorist” activities carried out by “Hamas in Gaza,” noting that “Hamas wants to remove Israel from existence.” She also sharply criticized Kuwait’s disruption of the US draft statement. The Kuwaiti revised draft-resolution calls for full respect by all parties of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including the protection of the civilian population, stressing the need to take appropriate steps to ensure the safety and well-being of civilians and to ensure their protection, as well as to guarantee accountability for all violations. The draft-resolution also condemns the “excessive use of force by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the Gaza Strip, including the use of live ammunition against civilian demonstrators, including children, as well as against health workers and journalists. It also expresses “deep concern over the loss of innocent lives.”